Town Hall Meeting Disappoints
Wednesday, December 8th, 2010
After returning from the USS’s Town Hall on Social Justice at Tishman Auditorium last Wednesday, a friend and I reflected upon what we had just witnessed. We were there covering the event for the newest issue of the Free Press, and both of us were taken aback by the event’s sorry attendance and the overall state of the discourse held.
We wondered what could possibly account for such a lukewarm response to the town hall, which was held to promote a discourse on the university’s inability to provide a thoroughly diverse academic and institutional experience for its students. But then my friend said something that I found uncompromisingly honest: that many of us attend the New School so that we don’t have to deal with these issues. We come here to absorb and take advantage of all that New York City has to offer; we don’t want to bother with a closed campus, weekly football games, or any real sense of community other than that which the city provides us. And in this respect, we really couldn’t give a damn about the issues relating to that same neglected community here at the New School.
This apathy is a shame, because the New School student body would be wise to recognize that regardless of whether or not we desire any sense of communal togetherness at this institution, the issues that the USS confronted through their leak of the report affect everyone that attends this university. “Desegregating Diversity: From Myth to Mandate,” was only sapped of controversy after it was ignored by both the student body and administration alike. If anyone bothered to read the report, they would realize that our school suffers from not only organizational shortcomings, but academic ones as well, which have a direct impact on the education we receive.
These inadequacies go beyond the color of skin or sexual orientation of those who make important decisions from within the New School administrative hierarchy, or that of the professors and faculty who teach us in the classrooms. When our curriculum ignores or lacks focus on the work of racial, social, and sexual minorities, it is at the expense of a thoroughly modern, unprejudiced, and universal academic experience.
Many of us came to the New School because we wanted to receive a progressive, open-minded education that promotes distinctly liberal-minded values and ethics; values like those which prompted the founders of this institution to provide a place where students could “seek an unbiased understanding of the existing order, its genesis, growth, and present working.” It is a travesty that we now find ourselves full of nothing but indifference towards issues which relate directly to ensuring that tradition endures.
We wondered what could possibly account for such a lukewarm response to the town hall, which was held to promote a discourse on the university’s inability to provide a thoroughly diverse academic and institutional experience for its students. But then my friend said something that I found uncompromisingly honest: that many of us attend the New School so that we don’t have to deal with these issues. We come here to absorb and take advantage of all that New York City has to offer; we don’t want to bother with a closed campus, weekly football games, or any real sense of community other than that which the city provides us. And in this respect, we really couldn’t give a damn about the issues relating to that same neglected community here at the New School.
This apathy is a shame, because the New School student body would be wise to recognize that regardless of whether or not we desire any sense of communal togetherness at this institution, the issues that the USS confronted through their leak of the report affect everyone that attends this university. “Desegregating Diversity: From Myth to Mandate,” was only sapped of controversy after it was ignored by both the student body and administration alike. If anyone bothered to read the report, they would realize that our school suffers from not only organizational shortcomings, but academic ones as well, which have a direct impact on the education we receive.
These inadequacies go beyond the color of skin or sexual orientation of those who make important decisions from within the New School administrative hierarchy, or that of the professors and faculty who teach us in the classrooms. When our curriculum ignores or lacks focus on the work of racial, social, and sexual minorities, it is at the expense of a thoroughly modern, unprejudiced, and universal academic experience.
Many of us came to the New School because we wanted to receive a progressive, open-minded education that promotes distinctly liberal-minded values and ethics; values like those which prompted the founders of this institution to provide a place where students could “seek an unbiased understanding of the existing order, its genesis, growth, and present working.” It is a travesty that we now find ourselves full of nothing but indifference towards issues which relate directly to ensuring that tradition endures.
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