2008 Woodie Awards
STAFF EDITORIALS: Student Leadership; Six or Bust
Issue date: 12/27/04 Section: Editorials/Op-Ed
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Student Leadership
Each year we enter into a new social contract with the elected students leaders on our campus. We entrust them with the awesome responsibility of being our leaders, liaisons to the administration, and engineers of undergraduate social and intellectual life. In turn, they sacrifice their personal time to work on our behalf, lobby for greater amenities, and provide the appropriate climate becoming of a college campus.
The lofty goals we have for our student leaders, however, are rarely met with the same enthusiasm. At least recently, our leaders have not always been well-versed in the needs of its students and fail to represent the ideal Yeshiva student. Lately, Student Council positions have become snazzy ornaments to hang on an unadorned resume. And while not all members of Student Council subscribe to this standard of leadership, enough of them do. The fact that less-than-qualified students find their way into the ranks of leadership dilutes the entire enterprise and jeopardizes the efforts of those committed student leaders who thirst for real leadership.
Where are the prominent speakers frequenting our campus? Why should faculty and administration ventures be taxed with bringing the dialogue to us? These are initiatives that should be undertaken by our student leaders, whose job it is to plan and implement these programs.
To put it bluntly: YSU does not exist solely to put on a few concerts a year; SOY was not created to run a vaunted book sale. Students do not need to be treated to an evening at a pool hall. They can frequent these establishments on their own. Instead student organizations should focus on opening venues that our students cannot normally access, initiate programs that are more than globalized "hanging out," and push the intellectual agenda of the university.
A month ago, Yavneh, the Orthodox community at Columbia University, hosted a forum on Modern Orthodoxy. The panel was comprised of six distinct speakers, one of whom came from Yeshiva University. Why have we yet to sponsor such an event on our campus? Do not we too stand to benefit from such open discussions, which certainly in our case dissolve the boundaries between inside and outside of the classroom setting? The answer is, of course, unequivocally yes.
We need to alter our attitude about what Student Council exists for, not view it as extra-curricular but as co-curricular. We need to reengage debate. We need to fund undergraduate academic journals. We need to speak to each other about the issues that divide us. It's not about allocating money; it's about energizing the campus and synthesizing the social aspects of college life with the academic program.
Admittedly the student councils, YSU in particular, frequently funds club and class student council events. YSU is a continual partner in forums sponsored by the Israel and Political Science clubs (YSU is also the official publisher of this newspaper, which means it partially funds it). SOY ran eight days of successful Hanukah events, but need it take a holiday to see SOY signs posted across campus? And yes, club presidents would be unable to plan ambitious programs without the generosity of the student leadership. But the point is that YSU is not merely the sugar daddy for these groups. It should view itself as the leader of the entire pack, and work to develop our undergraduate co-curricular agenda.
Truthfully, some of this will come from inside the classroom, but the collegiate experience is one of totality. We dorm nearby the classrooms and Beit Midrash because our education is characterized by everything we do here. We must stop looking at the student government as the bankroll for a night out on the town. And they must stop assuming that we are content with the intellectual feed from the daily academic program. We have issued our cry, and we now await their response.
Six or Bust!
Our students will never completely accept policy set forth by the administration. Perhaps its part of the anti-establishment culture that so permeates the fertile minds of young adults. Or maybe it's part of our Jewish consciousness to argue and bicker about anything and everything possible. So we will not pretend to be surprised when our students begin to complain about the university's commitment to a six semester on campus requirement. And though it's been etched in the neglected course catalogue for already a number of years, like many academic policies at Yeshiva, it's also been ignored.
We commend the administration and the faculty for stepping up to the plate and taking charge of our education. Six semesters is an awfully short time to spend on a college campus. But five semesters is simply ridiculous. Students cannot expect to be well educated in such a short amount of time. College is a nurturing process, a time when our impassioned minds and hearts are yearning for knowledge. If we relegate our education to "getting out as soon as we can," we forfeit the very ideals we came here to achieve.
We are not naïve. We know that many students are only passing through Yeshiva. They come here to get the degree their parents want them to have or because it's the only place their parents would send them to. Not everyone is equally idealistic and energetic about their education. And that's why we have caring faculty and dedicated administrators who will do what's best for those students who simply don't know better. Even if students are committed to throwing away their education, Yeshiva will not let them.
We applaud the decisions made at the past faculty meeting. But the faculty and administration must also try harder to make students feel, and realize, staying on campus is worth their time. By way of such dialogue, we can hopefully eradicate the culture of rapid education and move towards a move productive college experience.
Each year we enter into a new social contract with the elected students leaders on our campus. We entrust them with the awesome responsibility of being our leaders, liaisons to the administration, and engineers of undergraduate social and intellectual life. In turn, they sacrifice their personal time to work on our behalf, lobby for greater amenities, and provide the appropriate climate becoming of a college campus.
The lofty goals we have for our student leaders, however, are rarely met with the same enthusiasm. At least recently, our leaders have not always been well-versed in the needs of its students and fail to represent the ideal Yeshiva student. Lately, Student Council positions have become snazzy ornaments to hang on an unadorned resume. And while not all members of Student Council subscribe to this standard of leadership, enough of them do. The fact that less-than-qualified students find their way into the ranks of leadership dilutes the entire enterprise and jeopardizes the efforts of those committed student leaders who thirst for real leadership.
Where are the prominent speakers frequenting our campus? Why should faculty and administration ventures be taxed with bringing the dialogue to us? These are initiatives that should be undertaken by our student leaders, whose job it is to plan and implement these programs.
To put it bluntly: YSU does not exist solely to put on a few concerts a year; SOY was not created to run a vaunted book sale. Students do not need to be treated to an evening at a pool hall. They can frequent these establishments on their own. Instead student organizations should focus on opening venues that our students cannot normally access, initiate programs that are more than globalized "hanging out," and push the intellectual agenda of the university.
A month ago, Yavneh, the Orthodox community at Columbia University, hosted a forum on Modern Orthodoxy. The panel was comprised of six distinct speakers, one of whom came from Yeshiva University. Why have we yet to sponsor such an event on our campus? Do not we too stand to benefit from such open discussions, which certainly in our case dissolve the boundaries between inside and outside of the classroom setting? The answer is, of course, unequivocally yes.
We need to alter our attitude about what Student Council exists for, not view it as extra-curricular but as co-curricular. We need to reengage debate. We need to fund undergraduate academic journals. We need to speak to each other about the issues that divide us. It's not about allocating money; it's about energizing the campus and synthesizing the social aspects of college life with the academic program.
Admittedly the student councils, YSU in particular, frequently funds club and class student council events. YSU is a continual partner in forums sponsored by the Israel and Political Science clubs (YSU is also the official publisher of this newspaper, which means it partially funds it). SOY ran eight days of successful Hanukah events, but need it take a holiday to see SOY signs posted across campus? And yes, club presidents would be unable to plan ambitious programs without the generosity of the student leadership. But the point is that YSU is not merely the sugar daddy for these groups. It should view itself as the leader of the entire pack, and work to develop our undergraduate co-curricular agenda.
Truthfully, some of this will come from inside the classroom, but the collegiate experience is one of totality. We dorm nearby the classrooms and Beit Midrash because our education is characterized by everything we do here. We must stop looking at the student government as the bankroll for a night out on the town. And they must stop assuming that we are content with the intellectual feed from the daily academic program. We have issued our cry, and we now await their response.
Six or Bust!
Our students will never completely accept policy set forth by the administration. Perhaps its part of the anti-establishment culture that so permeates the fertile minds of young adults. Or maybe it's part of our Jewish consciousness to argue and bicker about anything and everything possible. So we will not pretend to be surprised when our students begin to complain about the university's commitment to a six semester on campus requirement. And though it's been etched in the neglected course catalogue for already a number of years, like many academic policies at Yeshiva, it's also been ignored.
We commend the administration and the faculty for stepping up to the plate and taking charge of our education. Six semesters is an awfully short time to spend on a college campus. But five semesters is simply ridiculous. Students cannot expect to be well educated in such a short amount of time. College is a nurturing process, a time when our impassioned minds and hearts are yearning for knowledge. If we relegate our education to "getting out as soon as we can," we forfeit the very ideals we came here to achieve.
We are not naïve. We know that many students are only passing through Yeshiva. They come here to get the degree their parents want them to have or because it's the only place their parents would send them to. Not everyone is equally idealistic and energetic about their education. And that's why we have caring faculty and dedicated administrators who will do what's best for those students who simply don't know better. Even if students are committed to throwing away their education, Yeshiva will not let them.
We applaud the decisions made at the past faculty meeting. But the faculty and administration must also try harder to make students feel, and realize, staying on campus is worth their time. By way of such dialogue, we can hopefully eradicate the culture of rapid education and move towards a move productive college experience.