Toward Improved Campus Life

Casting Off Military Occupation and Restoring Western Culture

To those who have recently ventured from the confines of the luxurious dormitory facilities, it is apparent that Yeshiva University Security Chief Don Sommer's military occupation of the uptown campus has been a thorough one. Uniformed warriors saturate the vast expanses of the two-block campus from Belfer to Schottenstein to the "Main Building." These mercenaries of death are trained in the useful skills of identification card demand, sitting, standing, and the occasional surreptitious sleeping episode. This totalitarian police state has given rise to a campus that is virtually bereft of crime, life, spirit, vitality or any other features that might suggest that a university exists at the corner of 185th Street and Amsterdam Avenue.

Even with the obvious strength of the on-campus commando presence, there are periodic lapses in security efficacy. A few months ago this phenomenon was manifested with the theft of two ornately sculpted ritual kiddush cups from the Yeshiva University Museum, which is reportedly housed in a small locked chamber in the bowels of the Gottesman Library. Recognizing the need to prevent a recurrence of such an institutional catastrophe, the administration decided that innovative security measures had to be devised. In consonance with its historical legacy of brilliant protection schemes, YU Security immediately instituted beefed up checkout requirements at the Library exit.

The checkout station now obligates students to surrender their backpacks for inspection and submit to an intrusive full cavity check by a rotund stick-toting Bulgarian woman named Mucusa before leaving the Library. While this is clearly a necessity for the retention of the remaining cutout cardboard synagogue exhibit in the Museum and may, as security has suggested, uncover the perpetrator who brings the valuable goblets back to the library with him/her to utilize as part of a lavish fourth floor repast, some audacious students have suggested that an electronic alarm system might be more effective and less intrusive than the current approach. Some even risked running afoul of Mucusa when they contended {gasp} that an unfortunate security guffaw should not have spawned unnecessary inconvenience for students and the insulting implication that they bear responsibility for the theft of the University's holy grails. This momentary ascendance from the depths of apathy that resulted in a fleeting expression of student independence of will was ignored and shortly thereafter forgotten about entirely. Alas, now we need only speculate about what useful measures might have been adopted had student perspectives been taken seriously.

Of course, it would be inaccurate to portray the Tiananmen Square Library repression episode as the watershed event in stifling on-campus student experience. Precedent for this policy direction can be found in a host of previously established provisions relating to campus life. While we all concur that it is indeed benevolent that University policy is formulated to accommodate neighborhood residents through regulations that provide an outdoor social and recreational area in front of Morgenstern Hall, the unspoken rule that only students require identification to enter University buildings while local residents enter freely, and the culturally sensitive doctrine that most University employees speak a language other than English to forge demographic consistency with the environs, these initiatives are viewed by many students as deleterious to the character of their campus experience. To be fair though, during the winter months, all wild carousing, drug deals, and gang wars involving non-students on University grounds must be concluded by 4 A.M. to facilitate the efforts of the handful of students who wish to study in the absence of the music and smoke filled din that generally engulfs the campus.

Propagandistic pamphlets bearing the University's seal argue that Washington Heights provides a unique university experience. This may be correct in the sense that no other university in the country is subjected to comparable physical conditions, but is disingenuous if "unique" is intended to convey a favorable connotation.

Barring the imminent resurrection of Washington Heights as a viable residential district, the physical locale of Yeshiva University will not soon be considered one of its crowning virtues. In light of this unfortunate state of affairs, students must be made to feel as comfortable as possible within the limited confines of their cloistered enclave. It follows that YU students must be given unequivocal priority of access on campus. Despite our sincere desire to coexist comfortably with our neighbors and our willingness to make sacrifices toward the attainment of that end, we must not concede the essential quality of life requisite for collegiate fulfillment. This mandates campus security efforts that are orchestrated to protect and serve students rather than intimidate and inhibit them. Only under these conditions can we look forward to a day when the rumbling of a column of armored Daihatsus heralds the triumph of the human spirit in the face of adversity rather than the siege of a hostage student populace.