Parting Words

Dear Editor,

I am not writing this letter to attack anyone, but as someone who has been on campus for the last seven years, I believe that it is my duty to voice my opinion on matters that have disturbed me lately. For starters, I want to address the issue of one of the letters that was published in the last issue of the Commentator regarding the bowling tournament. Although the Commentator is a place in which students can and should voice their complaints and ideas, it is not a place for petty personal demands for honor, especially for such an insignificant achievement.

This leads me to my next and more important point. As president of IBCSC, I (and apparently many others who reacted to the empty ballots "Is this a joke?!") was disturbed by the fact that all of the incoming IBCSC and SBMPSC candidates ran unopposed (I did not write this earlier because I felt that it would be unfair for those students who declared their candidacy in the correct fashion). I don't blame the students for not running for office, but I do believe that this reflects a major defficiency in respect and appreciation for YU. There are about fifty clubs (give or take a few)that exist at the Uptown Campus. Out of these clubs, maybe half are active on a regular basis. To me this indicates that many of these clubs simply exist to build resumes for students who don't have enough work experience and couldn't care less about this institution. It's just ironic that many of these so called "student leaders" are the ones who complain about how terrible YU is in relation to other universities. Granted, YU has its flaws, and too many of them, but it can become a better place for all students to excel, regardless of what they expect to gain from their experience at YU, if they were more active in solving the problems about which they complain. It seems to me that YC and SSSB Uptown have become vocational schools that students view selfishly as either obstacles or stepping stones for a more lucrative career instead of seeing them as life-molding institutions. YU's philosophy of Torah U'maddah is not only a catchy and theoretically perfect dicotomy, but rather, it is a philosophy that should guide students through their lives. Apparently, the ramnifications of which undergraduate institution a student choses to attend is an essential component of the undergraduate experience that many students seem to neglect.

Next, over the course of elections, I kept hearing complaints about the English Lit. requirement at YU. As an English major, I found this quite disturbing. Instead of encouraging students to benefit from a very strong YC department, some of the candidates seemed to complain about the burden of one or two English classes on the student who chas v'shalom has to suffer more than five semesters at YU. Obviously such an attitude is detrimental to future success of YU as a top-tier university that has to compete with institutions in which students take courses in their home schools. To give credit where it is deserved, I commend the candidates for addressing the issue of YU's virtually nonexistent summer program.

At this point, you're probably bored by my ranting, so I will make my final request to you. Please try to encourage students to become more active in YU student matters instead of printing sensationalist jargon just to fill space. The Commentator is a forum for student awareness and condition improvement, not only bathroom reading material. Try to keep this in mind. The Commentator possesses what I believe is incredible potential for student life improvement, both directly by informing students of new occurrences and indirectly, by increasing student involvement. Please put this great potential into beneficial action.

Matithyohu Balas
YC/IBC '99