As anyone who has kept up with the “Senioritis” column this year knows, certain seniors like to complain. A lot. In fact, certain seniors like to complain so loudly and repeatedly, that it gives the entire graduating class a bad name—making us seem ungrateful for the opportunities this campus has granted us, focusing only on the bad and never on the good. Well, I’m here to say that my hometown is more than three times further from Hoboken than Howell, Mich., and I have absolutely loved my five years here. I wholeheartedly believe that Stevens is a university where students—or even a single student—can make a big difference, where the professors and administrators care about our needs and desires, and where time is always better spent changing the issues our campus faces rather than merely lamenting them.
This brings me to last week’s Senioritis article—whilst I respect Mr. Brosnan’s positions in many ways, and whilst I think he raises some great questions and concerns, I believe that alienating the students who are best able to bring about the changes he professes to desire can only go against his professed cause. I will say it directly: I believe that the Stute should be funded by the university, not the Student Activity Fee. But, where Mr. Brosnan and I disagree is twofold.
First, I think that calling the Freshman senators-to-be “more or less morons” is entirely out of line. Mr. Brosnan himself ran for an SGA seat his first semester, and I feel certain that at that time he would have posed the same counter-argument that I will in defense of these students: naivety is not equivalent to stupidity.
Sure, the freshman class has not had the same history at Stevens that any of us old-timers have. That does not mean they are morons—it means they are the future. Bringing them into a culture of lamenting campus issues and bemoaning our inability to change the school is only dooming the campus to continued issues. Bringing students into a culture where they are encouraged to bring change to campus, shown how much Stevens has to offer, and given nurturing guidance in their formative year(s) at Stevens will conversely brighten the future of the school. Now, I understand that any of those changes might not occur until I and most everyone I know has graduated, but that doesn’t mean we should ever discourage them.
This ties in to my second point of disagreement: students can change Stevens. Not just in minor ways like slight budget alterations, but in substantive and lasting ways. When I came to Stevens, undergraduates in graduate courses had no protection under the Honor System, there was no gluten-free zone in Pierce, and the SGA was known mostly for its torturously long budgeting meetings—not for trying to represent student interests. All of these have changed because of students. Students who started out as naïve freshman who wanted to make a difference. Is there still more to improve? Of course. There always is—but thankfully we have freshmen interested in picking up that torch, and rather than dousing the flame, we ought to kindle it.
