Author: Cooper Sutton

As students, we often get caught up in our daily lives on campus, consumed by the mostly trivial problems that surround us. For this reason, we at The Bucknellian feel compelled to congratulate and learn from the actions of one of this year’s People of the Year, Christina Cody ’12.

Cody’s actions this year have truly broken the mold of what we expect from a student of this University. Few would argue against the fact that, in general, students exude apathy in situations like this. When it comes to making serious change on campus, specifically in the way students think, not many students would go as far as Cody did to accomplish her goals.

We often hear the terms “first-world problems,” as well as “the Bucknell Bubble,” and these two concepts delineate one of the largest problems on our campus: students are just not connected to real life. Often all that matters is fitting in and being cool.

We only pay attention to these “problems,” when really we should be focusing on the type of issues Cody is addressing.

Why do we do this? Maybe because we are so busy that we don’t take the time to stop and think, maybe we just don’t think that we can make a difference in the campus’ culture, or maybe it is something completely different.

Whatever the reason, we must take notice of extraordinary students like Cody, who not only addressed a problem on campus, but also took action to create serious awareness. We must realize that we can make a difference.

With that said, talking about promoting change is easy–-taking action is very hard. How do we make the jump from idea to action? There is no correct answer to this question, no guaranteed way to ensure change.

A great start, though, is for we as students to slow down and think about what is actually meaningful in life. We need to take some time for ourselves, to sit back, relax and forget about frat parties and Lilly Pulitzer. If we can at least start with a change in our own individual mindset, we will have the opportunity to change the broader campus culture.

So, as the school year winds down and we prepare to go home for summer, we all should take some time to think about how we want the University to be when we come back in the fall. And while we think about this, we must never lose sight of who really has the power to enact change: we do.

When students talk about diversity on campus, we often talk in terms of racial diversity, which is clearly deficient on our campus. However, this dialogue overlooks a major factor of campus diversity–the LGBT community.

In light of the recent talks given by Dan Savage and Randy Potts, we at The Bucknellian feel compelled to congratulate the campus community on addressing these issues head on and bringing them to the forefront.

In the past, issues of gender orientation and association have seemed to fly under the radar on campus. Now, thanks to the outstanding work being done by LGBT office, the fight for awareness has turned into a movement for action.

With movements such as Fran’s House and the newfound ability to apply for gender neutral housing, it seems that this university has taken a major step in the right direction. These types of projects have been talked about often in the past, but no longer are they just talk.

What’s more, the LGBT office is not the only part of our community taking action. This week, Chi Phi Fraternity brought Randy Potts to campus and Lambda Chi Alpha Fraternity, in conjunction with FLAG, brought Dan Savage.

This semester seems to mark a major milestone for our university. Arguably for the first time ever, we as students are realizing and taking action for a minority, yet significant, group of people on campus. When multiple organizations outside of LGBT are bringing in speakers and spreading awareness, we know that we have taken a significant step in the right direction.

Hopefully, we as a community can continue to make our campus more open and accessible to the LGBT community because, although we have moved forward, we as a student body still have a long way to go.

One wonders if this University will ever completely be a safe space for all students. We certainly hope so, but for this goal to be realized, the students of this campus need to take positive action. Words can only go so far to address a problem-–only through student-driven, communal action can we make a significant change.

The discontinuation of the Plan for Prominence system for the University’s Greek Life created quite the debate when it was first implemented at the beginning of this semester. It begged the question, is it better to do community service of one’s own accord if it sacrifices a large number of those people who would volunteer?

So far, it seems like the University made a major mistake by stripping many local organizations of hundreds of student volunteers. Though the school may not have directly stopped those students from participating in local community service opportunities, there exists an unfortunate reality that exhibits itself in the lack of motivation of college students.

Organizations such as Head Start, Bucknell Buddies and many local food banks are currently struggling to find volunteers, and the removal of mandatory attendance is clearly the driving force of this. The P4P system clearly worked-–the soaring number of community service hours by students from previous years stands as a vigorous testament to the good it did.

College students tend to prioritize their own needs over the needs of others, so a student might not take the time to volunteer if he or she has had a busy week or has other obligations. By making a basic level of volunteer work mandatory for Greek students, the University is ensuring a solid base of volunteer workers for local causes.

What’s more, it is giving students who would not volunteer otherwise a great chance to learn the benefits of volunteer work–-who knows, maybe it will inspire them to do more in the future.

By eliminating such an integral part of the Greek experience, the University has sacrificed results for nobility. Even though it is much more meaningful gesture when a student volunteers of his or her own accord, less fortunate community members suffer from a smaller volunteer work force.

In theory, the cancellation of P4P may have seemed like a good way to create “real” volunteer opportunities for students, meaning that they wouldn’t be mandatory empty gestures. However, the end result has been indifference on behalf of students and suffering on behalf of those who really need help.

In an ideal world, the blame for the lack of current volunteer numbers would fall on the students who do not sign up. In reality, though, change at this school cannot come from influencing individuals to do the right thing; it must come via institutional action. P4P, or some equivalent system, must be reestablished for the local community’s sake.

With the current state of the economy, as well as the University’s low endowment (relative to similar academic institutions), it seems obvious that the University needs to make every effort to spend money efficiently. Thus, it comes as a great relief that the topic of changing health care policies came up in this past faculty meeting on April 3.

Even though not all students choose to be covered by the current health care plan and therefore do not pay for it, the University still absorbs the costs of all students’ health insurance. Under this model, the University is losing at least tens of thousands of dollars per year.

This model is simply unacceptable in an institution such as this one. We, the students, see our tuition increase by thousands of dollars with each passing year. As a result, many of us have to take out student loans and work extra jobs, doing anything necessary to keep paying the massive bills.

Perhaps this is idealistic–or even unrealistic–but maybe it is time for this University, as well as others from across the nation, to remember why we are all here. We come to a school like this one to engage in scholarship, to expand our horizons, to prepare ourselves for the real world. We are here to learn.

Sometimes, behind all the talk of bureaucracy and student loans and endowment we forget what truly matters. We forget that, even though our school is private, the primary concern is to learn, not to make money. With this in mind, the focus of tuition should be to allow for the best possible education of a student, not to stratify higher education along class lines. It should only cover what it needs to cover.

This university, to more fully meet the ideal goals of education, should make every effort to keep its tuition rates as low as possible. Cutting substantial unnecessary spending on student health care is a great way to begin addressing this question, but we still have a long way to go.

At a time when our endowment is relatively low, the University is pouring money into an extensive construction project and the United States’ economy is suffering, we at The Bucknellian challenge our administration to think of new, innovative and efficient ways to spend our money. We challenge the administration to attempt to halt the rising tuition, without sacrificing its own ability to keep the school running properly.

All-in-all, the answer seems simple. Smarter spending on the behalf of the administration will benefit all aspects of the University: its faculty, its students and its integrity.

This week, The Bucknellian decided to spotlight one of the most unrecognized and underappreciated groups on campus: ROTC. This group of men and women dedicate a huge amount of time and energy to training as a cadet–-in addition to being a student.

As a school, we should recognize and congratulate the extraordinary efforts of these students. When we really start to consider how hard they work and what they are working toward, we can see that they really are extraordinary people.

Most students at this school shudder at the idea of waking up for an 8 a.m. class (or even a 10 a.m. class, for that matter). Imagine, as an ROTC cadet, waking up every morning as early as 5:30 a.m. to go on your daily three or four mile run.

Most students at the University complain constantly about their workload, struggling to balance their academic and social lives. The cadets, meanwhile, face up to 10 hours of extra work per week, including classes that do not count for academic credit. At some schools, the ROTC program can lead to a Military Science minor, but not here.

And despite all the extra work and hardships, they do not complain. They fly under the radar and always do their job.

Members of ROTC also deserve credit for their self-initiative, since they are essentially paying their way through college. What’s more, when they are done with school, they enlist in the military and risk their lives for our freedom.

When all is said and done, ROTC cadets have a lot more on their plates than average students, and they persevere through both school and training without complaint. For this reason, and so many more, we as a student body and school community should recognize them for their efforts.

Perhaps many of us do recognize the cadets internally, but few show it in an external manner. It is unfortunate that the University does not sponsor any events that seriously raise awareness of the program or the students involved in it, but even something as simple as a smile or a thank you could suffice.

So, we at The Bucknellian challenge the University community to recognize the self-sacrifice and hard work of the men and women who put their lives on the line to protect our way of life, especially those men and women who are a part of our very own University family.

Over the past few semesters, through such sources as the Campus Climate Report, we as students have seen that there exists a certain attitude toward women on our campus that is unhealthy. The delineation of the problem has been expressed to us time and time again. One must begin to wonder, though, how we can move past articulating the problem and actually do something about it.

With this in mind, the staff of The Bucknellian is very happy to see lectures come to campus that attempt to engage the problem and educate the student body. Specifically, the recent lecture on the porn culture in America by Gail Dines and the Speak UP Bucknell initiative have been two outstanding means of educating University students.

The problem we have found with these opportunities is that they are, for the most part, poorly attended and poorly advertised. When all is said and done, the vast majority of the audience at these events are those that do not necessarily need to learn about the topic; it mainly consists of women and Women’s & Gender Studies students.

A lack of communication across the school and the elimination of the Plan 4 Prominence (P4P) program have seemed to lead to a change in audiences for events such as the “Pornland” talk. Rather than a Greek male-dominated audience, those who attend the lecture are generally those who are already knowledgeable on the subject.

Putting events like this on the Message Center does not ensure that the entire campus will find out about them. In fact, most students do not read the Message Center at all. The only other realistic way for students to find out about these events is through class; for example, a Women’s & Gender Studies professor might tell his or her students that a speaker is coming and offer extra points for attendance.

The problem with this dynamic is that the students in these classes are already educated on the subject. A great irony exists in the fact that the students who truly need to attend these lectures are the ones who are least likely to know they’re happening. 

We understand that it can be difficult to inform an entire student body on academic lectures and events throughout the year. We also understand the difficulty inherent in getting these students to attend lectures without an incentive-based system like P4P.

Most students, be it out of apathy or laziness, or because of other obligations, simply will not go to lectures that do not directly relate to them if they do not have to.

It will be extremely hard to change this attitude in students, but it also is essential to the attitude and climate of our university. It seems that we will only be able to make this happen through a communal effort, and perhaps through an administrative change that stimulates an incentive-based system for students.

With the recent decision to add a new sorority to the University’s Greek Life system, we at The Bucknellian are very pleased with the direction that the Panhellenic Council is taking. The way fraternities and sororities are set up on this campus, there seems to be a need for a new sorority to mirror the fraternity structure.

Greek women on campus are provided with fewer options because there are significantly more fraternities than sororities (11 fraternities,  seven sororities). For this reason, men receive two major benefits.

First, they have a much broader range of groups to choose from during recruitment, allowing for a more diverse selection. Being able to choose from 11 different fraternities, a University man is more likely to find a group of people with whom he can easily fit in.

The second benefit of more sororities stems from a decreased chapter size. Because the number of women looking to rush is so high and the number of sororities is so low, some chapters range as high as 170 members, and the people in those chapters suffer.

With numbers that high, a Greek organization loses much of its value. Without the ability to form close bonds with all of one’s brothers or sisters, one has to wonder whether that organization is a true brotherhood or sisterhood, or simply a social club.

Many members of The Bucknellian staff have also noticed that the size of sororities leads to a large number of cliques throughout the chapter, while fraternities, which are much smaller in size, seem to be much more unified.

Greek life is a place to form bonds with similar people and to find friendships that last longer than one’s educational years. The addition of a new sorority and decreased chapter sizes will only make Greek life stronger in this regard.