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Printer-Friendly ModeStudent protest result of poor communication
February 19, 2007 —
Students and banks can't seem to get along. And we're not just talking about credit cards and student loans: it appears as if the physical presence of a bank in the Student Center building may be jeopardized, largely thanks to the efforts of a handful of students who voiced their concern on Tuesday.
A number of students showed up at the President's Forum last week and startled President Gilbertson with some opinions he was apparently unaware of: that, despite those who have observed the opposite, the Cardinal Cage is indeed well-utilized space, and something on campus worth preserving as is. In other words, a bank will simply not do.
The students' concerns were numerous. Some expressed their displeasure at the mere notion of a commercial entity in the Cage, arguing that further commercialization of the University is undesirable. Others said that the atmosphere of the Cage is unlike anything else on campus and an ideal spot to just unwind. Accordingly, bringing the room up to grade might irreparably damage its appeal.
Others still argued that the biggest problem with the entire situation is the fact that students weren't aware that such a plan ever existed. At the forum, Gilbertson said that the decision to relocate the bank from Wickes to the Student Center building was one made "about a year" ago. Yet the outrage here clearly suggests that students simply didn't know about it until a week ago, and it is here that we can take a stance.
What seems to be the most aggravating part of this entire controversy, if you will, is that a number of students who under most circumstances should have known about the decision didn't.
For one, the editor of the Vanguard last year didn't know about it. This paper has covered capital expenditures and construction projects for years now. We've written on everything from the pretzel shop to Pioneer Hall. If anybody should have known about a significant physical change to the University, it would have been the editor.
But he didn't.
Neither did then-Student Association president Emily Hammerbacher. Neither did then-University Residence Association president Steve Miller. If none of these people were consulted before the decision was made, who was?
Obviously, we can't blame the administration for not being clairvoyant enough. It had the students' best interests in mind, as Gilbertson made clear at Tuesday's forum.
But the problem was that no one got the opportunity to tell the administration that it misunderstood those very same students' interests.
The open environment of inquiry at SVSU is enviable, and so it comes as a shock to see that the opportunity to inquire into the matter was simply not there. Thankfully, the remodeling has been pushed back to summer and hopefully between now and then the administration will engage in a dialogue with the student body for which it exists to serve.