STUDENTS returning to Charlottesville last week were greeted by new, prohibitively strict regulations on dorm decorations. While most of the grousing around Grounds has centered on the practical inconvenience of these rules, they epitomize a broader trend which is far more disturbing -- the administration has grown a nasty habit of ignoring student needs and setting its own unilateral agenda. If there was as much concern for safety lighting as there appears to be for the fire code, you wouldn't be able to tell night from day.
It is natural and understandable that the administration is looking out first and foremost for the University's institutional interests. Students are only here for four years; the fixture that is the University must endure. Thus, administrators focus on issues which make the school appealing for prospectives: constructing new facilities, improving the diversity image and keeping dorm fires from making the front page. However, none of this excuses turning a blind eye to the here and now.
A prime example of this is safety. While the administration does place a high premium on safety, performing semesterly safety walks to identify problems, a quick trip around Grounds reveals any number of areas which desperately need better lighting. The area by the new Ivy parking garage is shadowy and bare; it can be uncomfortable for both men and women to walk alone from the garage late at night. Large swaths of North Grounds are similarly ill-lit.
Before concentrating on improving our U.S. News & World Report ranking, the administration should make an overwhelming effort so that no student ever has to feel unsafe walking anywhere on Grounds. The resources exist; the will does not. If safety was truly a priority, there would not remain a litany of dangerous areas on Grounds.
The problem is not only on the adult side of the equation; students need to make these concerns known in order for administrators to act on them. Student Council can act as that conduit, but recently it seems as if the administration cares less and less about the voice of the students. Last year's housing policy change, which stripped upperclassmen of their priority, was made with minimal student consultation. What's worse, even if students had universally shouted that we didn't want the change, chances are upperclassmen would still be missing their priority.Modifications to printing and housekeeping policy over the past few years have similarly been made with little effort to work with students to come to an equitable compromise.
Vice President for Student Affairs Patricia Lampkin explains that priority-setting decisions are made by considering available resources, potential impact, required compliances, and, when needed input from affected groups. Yet even during the times when the administration actively seeks student input, it is hard to shake the feeling that they are simply giving us lip service before continuing with whatever course they had originally decided on.For example, the Athletic Department's decision to ban the Pep Band from playing even at sporting events the marching band does not attend was made over the objections of students as codified in a strongly-worded Student Council resolution.And, despite nearly 75 percent of respondents coming out in favor of domestic partner benefits on last spring's student referendum, the administration still refuses to take any stance on the issue.
To a degree, the administration should not be completely beholden to student interest. If that was the case, instead of innovative academic programs and wonderfully improved facilities, we would have plasma TVs in every suite and free kegs at football games. Yet when it comes to issues of true importance -- those of student safety and student health -- the same lack of priority still holds fast. We don't have any sort of administration-sponsored contraceptive availability like so many of our peer institutions; we don't have enough functional blue lights around Grounds.
Little will change this dynamic except an institutional decision by the administration to discover true student concerns and give them primacy. The students can offer no incentives and no threats; our hand is so weak we don't even have cards to hold. All we can do is look administrators square in the eye and tell them we had to walk through a pitch-black stretch of Gooch/Dillard two nights in a row because it took three days for a bank of lights to be fixed. All we can do is tell them that they cannot serve us by ignoring us.
One way to foster an administration understanding of the truly important student life issues would be to form a small panel of faculty and regular students (not student leaders) tasked with culling through the complaints which center on annoyance and finding the ones which can be life-changing. That panel might find that behind griping about crowded buses and bad food, there are students who have stories of nearly getting hit by cars every week because there is no pedestrian bridge or even a warning light on Emmett Street by Memorial Gym.
Ultimately, it comes down to a matter of priority. With finite resources and infinite need, it is a calculated decision to spend money on getting more minority faces enrolled rather than getting more lights built. The diversity initiative is far sexier; it's easier to tout those programs than to show off the speed at which you replace busted bulbs. But let us hope there never comes a day when a woman is assaulted because those lights are broken, or not there at all; if that happens, all the flame-retardant paper in the world won't help her.
Elliot Haspel is a Cavalier Daily associate editor. He can be reached at ehaspel@cavalierdaily.com.
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