At UB, it's easy to get caught up in quantity –28,000 students, 300-person classes, 120 credits, striving for a 4.0. Seemingly everything we do can be quantified. These numbers and statistics can simplify our experience. They also, however, often mask our qualitative needs.
In the wake of Pres. John Simpson's retirement, I have been considering issues of quality, rather than quantity, in our lives on campus. With a new university president on the way, we, as students, have the opportunity to build a framework for our input in UB's present and future. In succeeding Pres. Simpson, our next president, Satish Tripathi, needs to be explicitly aware of our needs and wants.
This university has no greater cause than providing students with high-quality, low-cost education. The problem becomes, how do the students express their cumulative voice. Though we expect that our university's leaders are able to see and understand campus issues from our perspectives, we know that is not always the case.
Instead, I say we should strive for the ideal of expanded representation. The best way to achieve that is by establishing a student advisory council to the president. With representatives from all walks of life at UB, we can ensure, more than ever before, that students' needs and concerns are heard now and in the future.
The fact of the matter is that individuals are constrained by their own perspectives and preferences. We can mitigate the limited capacity of individual leaders by providing Dr. Tripathi with a body of students that he can use to gauge public opinion, bounce around ideas, and get a regular update on campus life from the perspective of those living it – from as many facets as possible. We may not be able to get 28,000 distinct perspectives in front of him, but we can present a good representative sample.
In the coming weeks, as we prepare to usher in our next president, I look forward to reaching out to student leaders from all segments of UB to make this happen.
Joshua Boston is the current student representative on the University at Buffalo Council.
Letters to the Editor are not edited by The Spectrum.
