by Colin Gliech
A month ago I was invited to write an email to President Farvardin offering my thoughts on one of campus’ most contentious topics: Residence Life.
Hear that? Invited. I was as surprised as you are. After all, it was only my first time meeting Dr. Favardin at his monthly Pancakes with the President, a forum where students share feedback with Stevens’ administration. And I was there as an antagonist.
I, my friends and our peers had complaints about Stevens’ operations that we felt had not been heard. Residence Life was a particularly hot topic. I was frustrated, convinced the gridlock on campus owed to an absence of communication channels between students and the administration, and I was going to take action. I sought to understand how students might make their voices heard. The Plan: I would arrive at Pancakes armed with deference and an arsenal of arguments. I’d pick the President’s brain about how to improve communication between students, faculty and administrators whilst secretly steering him toward student-centric governance. I would have my pancakes and eat them too.
But I never carried out The Plan. There wasn’t enough time. Pancakes covered a host of legitimate campus issues that needed student input: the Ten Year Plan, the Registrar, professor quality. Dr. Farvardin really listened, met each student’s points with attention and care. His responses ranged from clear explanations of why the school operates a certain way, to promising immediate action on a few defined issues. His attitude moved me; I felt respected. And when the meeting came to a close without addressing the issue of student engagement, I realized it was because I had just done student engagement. Pancakes was one of the mythical channels I had sought before attending the meeting. The frequency was open.
I wanted to test how far this openness would go. I wrote in about ResLife. My complaints centered on three points: the state of housing infrastructure and the broken work-order system, the poor quality of interaction between students and staff, and the lack of student centrism in a number of policies. A short survey substantiated how real these issues are to students. I would like to thank all those who wrote in.
I sent my email on a Sunday. By Monday I had a meeting request from Dean Ballantyne, head of Residence Life. On Tuesday I was asked to meet with the President’s Cabinet. By the end of the following week, I had been granted a fifteen minute presentation with top school officials and over an hour of face time with the departmental dean.
I was never met with a defensive attitude. I learned that some of the issues had already been taken care of—did you know that a new work-order system was put in place two months ago?—while others were a priority moving forward. I was asked by Dean Ballantyne to keep in touch and refer other students with complaints. She wished that I had just emailed her directly and that other students would feel comfortable doing the same (please do this).
Positive change is happening right now. RAs are already receiving better training to help students. The Dean has been reinforcing the need for communication. Facilities recently hired additional student-staff to process work-orders. While these actions are a step in the right direction, I challenge the administration to be proactive about student engagement, anticipate issues, and keep their momentum. Let’s aim to be even better next year and the year after that.
Through this all, one question has bothered me: how is it that after four years of griping, I had not once thought to speak directly with the administration? I felt ignored and I wasn’t alone. Survey responses showed how personal this was for students—how powerless they felt to change. Yet my experience indicated the exact opposite. All it took was one email to catalyze honest dialogue between students and staff. At least under this administration, we share the blame in gridlock.
Dr. Farvardin leads by example in creating a student-centric university. Pancakes with the President is as real as communication gets. Since taking leadership, he has made vast improvements, especially with regard to student engagement. They are reaching out; we need to take hold.
We—members of the student body—need to find voice. We have too-often undermined our legitimacy by failing to differentiate between one-time complaints and systemic issues. Let’s learn to do that. And when there’s a problem, let’s rally around existing institutions (RAs, the SGA, and other leadership organizations) to initiate change. If those institutions fail, let’s press on individually. Go to Pancakes with the President. Write an email to Dean Ballantyne, or Dean Nilsen, or the Provost. Better yet, set up a meeting and talk to them in person. Let’s stop succumbing to our fear of losing a school job or networking opportunity. Stevens is our community and when we help take care of it, we prove ourselves worthy of those opportunities. This University is headed into a bright future; let us, the students, lead the way.
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