This staff op-ed solely represents the majority view of The Stute editorial board to reflect opinions within the Stevens community. THEY DO NOT REFLECT THE VIEW OF THE STUTE AS AN ORGANIZATION.
The Stute is the independent student newspaper that writes Stevens history: A record marked by students who take ownership of the ebb and flow of the college experience, while administration pursues metrics and averages. The paper churns out 13 to 14 issues a semester, with roughly 30 articles per issue made possible by the coverage of 80 student reporters. The numbers stand as sums of a tried and true process. Our reporting has covered campus and university news to capture nearly every week of the academic year — if it happens, we write about it. Except for when we can’t. Our established reporting process was recently stonewalled when new Stute reporters contacted university staff for information on nationally down-trending admissions rates and the upcoming library renovation — timely university and campus news that the student body has stakes in.
When The Stute reached out to Student Affairs to understand why university comments uncharacteristically lacked detail and transparency, “I got told that I was searching for gossip, and I got told that I should look on the outside and I should stop focusing in, start reprinting more national news instead of reporting about what Stevens is doing internally,” said Jiya Jaisinghani, a 4/4 Biomedical Engineering major and Editor-in-Chief of The Stute. So, we wrote the university article without an administration comment. We turned to student organizations to fill the knowledge gaps, and in the process, student leaders volunteered their shared ongoing challenges with administration communication and unapproachability. Student leaders wanted to give us answers to the same questions they had been asking after months of fatigue from feeling unseen by the professionals who should be working to advise them. The Stute was seemingly the last link in a long chain of strained student-administration engagement to feel this pullback.
“I don’t think Stevens is perfect, and I don’t want it to be perfect, but I want it to admit when it’s not,” Jaisinghani continued. “I think that transparency is what we deserve, and that’s what the foundation of the newspaper is on.”
Honor Board
Stevens loves to talk about integrity. The Honor Board has served as an integral part of campus culture since 1908, and the students who serve on the Honor Board are not just volunteers; they are the ones behind the scenes who see academic honesty as vital to the value of their peers’ education. Despite this, the students who are most passionate about upholding this “integrity” were ignored. New efforts to create stricter anti-cheating policies were instigated when the Honor Board realized the level of unreported cheating threatens the value of the degree, and the administration seemed unaware of the situation’s scope. An anonymous student leader on the Honor Board described the cheating situation as “life or death.” Months of hard work and effort to engage the administration were met with silence. This resulted in confusion and exhaustion among the students involved.
It was made clear that professors fear that their jobs may be affected by negative evaluations if they abide by the Honor Board’s rules. Despite being aware of the issue, the administration was reluctant to take action on the issue. “Everyone is cheating on every exam. Honor Board is trying to do stuff. They don’t have the power. Admin doesn’t care.” When another anonymous student leader tried to work with administration to combat these problems, they quickly learned what came with the role of being a leader. At first, there was hope, with meetings and promises of working in partnership and drafting. This dissolved when the Honor Code Handbook was introduced in Fall 2025. The problem? It solidified the Honor Board’s position in defining academic policy, something the administration seemed reluctant to share. An anonymous student elaborates on the situation, stating, “[when] someone has accumulated power, they don’t want to let that go […] [but] in turn, I don’t think what they realize they’re doing is they’re making the situation worse.” The introduction of the Handbook, which sought to standardize and set rules for both academic integrity and proctoring, began a debate over how much authority the Honor Board truly holds at a time when the university needs stability.
These experiences reveal the structural gap that student leaders are forced to fill. Honor Board had stepped up from an adjudicator of the Honor System to a vocal advocate for integrity, compiling an entire code to provide stability for professors. The initial result was pushback and a debate over who truly holds power in these situations. Student leaders on the Honor Board subsequently struggled when trying to enforce any form of policy order, with one leader explaining, “[w]hen I was trying to report faculty who were violating proctoring policy, there was a lot of administrative pushback […] It was not my job, and there were also problems with ‘we’re going to look into it,’ and then there was no follow-up.” Indeed, the Honor Board had acted outside the precedents it set for the past few years. It did so out of care for the university, and a desire to support their fellow students and faculty. What transpired was a situation where the standardization was seen as a threat, and from there, debates proceeded, leaving student leaders burnt out on an initiative that came from a place of true care.
Credit cap
Stevens introduced a credit cap where they have reduced the maximum load of credits a student can take in any given semester. This “wellness initiative” is described as more beneficial for students, reducing their workload and allowing them to participate in more Stevens extracurriculars. What about the students who want to double major, declare a minor, or do a co-op? Administration had already made the decision for the credit cap when SGA came to them with student feedback. An anonymous student leader from SGA spoke on their experience and interactions with administration on the topic. “At the end of the day it’s about the money for them […] It feels like lies about ‘we want students to have more time and reduced credits to allow them to do more extracurriculars.’ It’s none of your business if I have free time. I’m here to get an education. If I want to be overwhelmed and doing homework all the time and not have to do other things, that’s my business.”
SGA leaders entered their terms with goals to rebuild trust and strengthen communication by meeting regularly with administration. In February and March, meetings with the Academic Operations Affairs Committee were held to ask questions about the credit cap and changing the grading scale. Jeylan Jubran, 4/4 Industrial and Systems Engineer and SGA President, recounted, “So we asked a few questions, and we saw the tone shift with a few of the deans that were there.” There were repeated attempts to clarify, but this was met with meetings redirected, emails rerouted, and questions left unanswered. “We brought it up, saying we just don’t understand how you expect students to do co-op, how you expect students to do majors and minors, etc., in which I just continuously kept on getting gaslit,” said Jubran. This matter finally reached the Dean’s Undergraduate Student Advisory Council, where an administrator told Jubran, “I don’t think this is the place where students should come and voice these concerns.” Jubran replied, “The Dean’s Advisory Council that is meant for students to voice concerns is not the place where students should voice concerns?”
Within weeks, SGA noticed tone shifts from almost all of the administration, across all departments. “All the projects that we were working on with the mayor’s office, we were suddenly not allowed to speak to the mayor.” Long-standing partnerships were suddenly affected; The SGA was unable to present to the Board of Trustees, a crucial opportunity to funnel student voices up the chain of command. Jubran stated the board was concerned over the numbers to justify the credit reduction and did not discuss academic ramifications or ROI. “They just cared about the money, and because we weren’t at the trustees meeting, we couldn’t have a conversation with them.” SGA has not received consistent communication from the trustees since March.
Cabinet meetings touched on students’ request for more transparency on the university budget crisis, despite admin silence and denial. Jubran highlighted students’ need to address campus operational changes, asking for basic updates and clarity. Jubran stated that the Vice President of Finances did not address this question. Instead, President Favardin pivoted to reiterate the credit cap and made incorrect statements on student credit course load. In response to this, SGA introduced the Letter from the Student Body against the credit cap to cite student concerns and institutional research on truly competitive approaches to lessen credit load rather than enact a cap. By the end, their concerns were silenced.
Library Renovation
The same pattern of dismissal and silence resurfaced with the expected library renovation. Stevens plans on renovating the library for the entirety of the Spring 2027 semester. When SGA leaders asked for transparency, there were concerns about delayed communication and administration hesitance to open dialogue. Jubran stated that Student Affairs and administration refused to host a town hall on the library renovation, a key opportunity to quell student timeline concerns and realign university priorities for the first time this academic year. Administration and university leadership have expressed hesitance to host open student discussion, pointing to a previous “Cookies with the Cabinet” event that they claim to have included “inappropriate questions” regarding university divestment. When administration asked Jubran to produce evidence of student testimonials that disagree with potential campus-wide policy, Jubran couldn’t provide them or Student Affairs with willing students, stating that “they’re not going to want to come and talk to you. They’re scared to come talk to you; that’s why they came and talked to their President. What am I going to do?” Jubran has also mentioned that this cycle of communication has repeated throughout her term over several different topics. She is not unfamiliar with administration responding this way.
Stevens’ administration has established a pattern of only engaging students when dialogue flows in one direction, underestimating the situational awareness and agency of the student body they serve. As a result, Stevens cannot even begin to feign transparency or sensitivity on issues where both are demanded of university leaders. Administration places themselves in a tall tower as they heavily rely on SGA and Jubran for student input, yet resist involvement when it’s Jubran and student leaders alike who initiate the approach.“I think they have the students’ best interests at heart; they truly believe that they are doing this for the benefit of the student body. What’s crazy to me is you didn’t ask the student body,” said Jubran.
Student Leader Crisis
The information bottleneck Jubran manages is a path to exhaustion. Jubran and her peers are students first, carrying academic and personal needs as they walk into administration meetings where they are expected to shoulder the university’s as well. It’s unacceptable for the students to ask for grace while carrying out responsibilities that fundamentally rest with university administrators. The toll of interfacing with roles intended to advise student initiatives, yet respond with deliberate inefficiency, has become a systematic bet on how long students can endure. Jubran was asked how often she finds herself in a dispute with administration. “Every single day, every single meeting, every time I have to go to an administration meeting. I have to prepare myself that I’m going to get yelled at, and I need a five-minute buffer to just relax and decompress before I go into a student meeting.”
“Why are we being so villanized? Because we are simply telling you what the students have told us, and I’m not treated as a human being. Like, I walk in, and sighs are being thrown around the room just because I’m about to ask you a question. It’s not like I’m coming in yelling at you for not doing your job. I’m coming in like, ‘Can you just help me explain this?’ or ‘How do I justify this to the student body?’”
The administration chooses when to take certain student leaders seriously in their positions. Student Affairs revoked SGA’s DuckLink access as a reactionary measure, citing communication mistakes made by Jubran’s predecessors, ultimately cutting off SGA’s direct communication with the student body on that platform.
Constructing a current timeline of student leader advocacy, from daily administration touchpoints to the highest university-level board, matters now more than ever because future students will be disinclined to face disrespect just to have a seat at the table. Amid the credit cap’s sweeping academic policy that has yet to be reconciled with department advising, student outcomes are at risk. As renovations that will shut down campus’ largest communal study space proceed, students’ sense of stability will erode. And when student body concerns and confusion grow as administration remains silent, it will not be because student leaders failed to engage.
Numerous student leaders have chosen to take leaves of absence after their experiences with administration left them discouraged and burned out. That sentiment is only increasing. Stevens students’ sense of agency—to change and be changed by the institution they commit years of their lives to—is at risk. Advocacy seems to be punished, and transparency is not valued. With each dismissal of student concerns, the university ensures its students have less and less to invest in.
Stevens is actively losing the voices that keep the school alive, and nobody is encouraged to take their places after. When asked about potential SGA candidates, Jubran shared, “No one wants to run for president, and I can’t blame them.” Jubran was previously open-minded to a second campaign to re-run, if the next term was uncontested. Now, after a summer off from the presidential role, she is caught between recognizing a path to burnout felt by every Stevens student leader, only magnified as SGA President, and an obligation to keep pushing back to make student voices heard.
Student organizations provide one of the most valuable experiences higher education has to offer undergraduates. These everyday commitments not only foster a community but preserve it. Stevens students plan, coordinate, problem-solve, advocate, and vote for peers who will grin and bear the bureaucracy that community representation invites. All because the final product means something to current and future students — a novelty that will never be captured in national rankings, but one the university has been remiss in fortifying. Stevens has found itself with a uniquely personalized and engaged ecosystem of organizations, but does the university deserve the communities and student leaders who breathe life into campus?
