On Sunday night StuCo President Atin Agarwal sent an e-mail to the student body, celebrating recent successes and announcing long-term agenda items. More significant, however, was his call for students to submit ideas and recommendations to StuCo for the second half of the year. In the spirit of cooperation, the News-Letter presents the following items of vital importance we hope to see StuCo carefully address during the second semester.
Advocate a real, centralized Student Union
If there is one factor lacking in the Hopkins experience, it is undeniably a sense of community. Upperclassmen live off campus, students are often more dedicated to finding an open cubicle on D-Level than they are to forming lasting friendships and -- the perennial complaint -- the Homewood campus is still without a centralized Student Union. While some progress has been made on the first two of these problems, little to none has been made on the third. Administrators claim that we're just one of the exceptional college campuses with a decentralized Student Union; this is bureaucrat-speak for, "Take a room or two from each building, put them together, and there's your Student Union." We need a single building that incorporates the social atmosphere of M-Level, the amusement of the HopStop, the charm of the Gilman lobby and the location of the MSE Library. It is time for StuCo to lead a charge against the University's resistance to constructing a building dedicated to student life.
Carry out the CUE Report recommendations
Most students are completely unaware that two years ago, the Committee on Undergraduate Education made many recommendations for improvements to the quality of student life on campus, which was found to be severely lacking. For the several months after the report that included these recommendations was released, the University made great strides to publicly execute them. Following the deaths of Chris Elser and Linda Trinh, these initiatives understandably took a back seat to pressing security concerns. But now that new security initiatives have taken root, it is time to return our focus to student life issues once again. If StuCo is looking for suggestions, they should immediately look to this document for a list of ideas. Everything from intramural sports to residential development is covered, and StuCo should be the loudest voice in support of the timely and effective completion of these projects.
Develop an efficient, visible source of public information
This year marked the unveiling of the JHBroadcast e-mail notification system, through which administrators sporadically hurl information -- sometimes important, usually not -- at students. While the system has marginally aided the dissemination of information to students, much of the information is unimportant to students. The StuCo weekly events e-mail is even more ineffective, as it is so bogged down with dates and events that next to no one reads it. The fact is that most students skip over the majority of their e-mail, leaving the current methods far short of an acceptable means of relaying important information. StuCo is going to have to get creative and find a way to quickly and concisely convey information to the entire student body in a way that is simply impossible to miss.
Become the interlocutor between students and faculty/administration
One of the more promising but short-lived ideas of the recent past was for the University to subsidize student dinners with professors, either individually or in groups. Novel ideas like this must not be allowed to lose their appeal, as one of the greatest concerns of students at Hopkins is professor interest. Most professors are in fact less detached than many students think, but they need students to initiate contact. StuCo should make it one of their chief responsibilities to encourage student-teacher relations. Furthermore, administrators significant to the academic lives of students must cease to be the invisible hand behind a curtain. Meetings between students, teachers and administrators outside of the classroom should be more frequent. StuCo should encourage students to reach out to their professors.
As a prominent voice for the student body and to the administration, StuCo has a high level of responsibilty to make sure that the concerns of students are addressed promptly and with every resource possible. StuCo must be the unflinching advocate of the students. If StuCo takes the right approach, future alumni may think back on how much their student government was able to enhance their Hopkins experience and enact real change. This can be a year to remember. With StuCo at the helm every year can be a year to remember. The real work begins today.
