From the Editor's Desk

By Shmuli Singer

Yeshiva breathed a collective sigh of relief this month, when the ABC news reporter departed campus, stymied in his attempt to broadcast a lurid story of rape and violence.  Subscribing to the ostrich school of crisis management, we concluded that burying our institutional head in the sand would suffice to negate the entire Purim incident’s occurrence.  “If it wasn’t reported, it never really happened,” we presumed, as we returned to the quotidian life of the Torah U’Madda utopia.  

We further relaxed, when we learned that the unimportant incident merely consisted of a garden-variety case of domestic violence.  Visions of headlines screaming “Yeshiva Students Participate in Rape” dissolved into the humdrum tale of just another sordid aftermath to an ordinary wild party.  Hey, it’s okay if he pushed her around a little, as long as there’s no threat of a real scandal, right?

Meanwhile, to indelibly erase all record of the event, Student Services wisely adopted a “don’t ask, just expel” policy toward everyone involved, including their roommates and cousins, just to be safe.  By using the facile two-step of indiscriminate punishment followed by total disregard, we had cleverly solved all of our problems with minimal fuss. 

Unfortunately, even the few individuals who did pay closer attention to the incident and its underlying causes completely underestimated the scope of the problems facing our school.  One administrator blamed Yeshiva’s admissions policies for accepting the students involved, while another suggested that the paucity of dormitory space had led to a subculture of outside apartments – dens of sin where drugs and alcohol abound.  Yet a third Yeshiva insider blamed the problem on Student Services, citing poor follow-up on enrolled students.  While each of these suggestions rings true, all of them miss the institutional forest for the trees.

What everyone from Roshei HaYeshiva to Student Services officials fails to recognize is that the incident on Purim night represents a growing disjunct in our undergraduate schools.  In essence, the unspoken problem lies in our very conception of Yeshiva as a coherent whole.  We blindly conceive of Yeshiva as a single institution, whose constituents march in lockstep under the banner of “One President, One University, One Yeshiva” to the beat of exhortations to avoid strife and discord.  We blithely ignore the growing reality that two very distinct cultures flourish side-by-side on campus, intertwined to the extent that the Purim debacle occurred merely 100 yards from the Bais Medrash.

Of course, an obvious and easy way to bridge the chasm between the two sides lies in adopting more stringent admissions policies, and draconian disciplinary codes.  These suggestions fail to directly address the problem, however.   Tightening religious admissions requirements would certainly homogenize the student body, but would also represent the shying away by Yeshiva of its responsibility towards students from less religious backgrounds.  When Rabbi Lamm implored newly ordained rabbis at the Chag HaSemikhah that “no Jew should be given up on,” presumably he was referring to Yeshiva’s role in education as well.   Furthermore, despite the best intentions of Admissions, such students could still slip into the system, leaving us with the same polarization dilemma we face now.

Enacting a zero-tolerance policy towards enrolled wrongdoers seems little better.  Ejecting more students would do little to solve the underlying cultural problem at hand, as it would merely take care of a symptom and not the root cause.  

For Yeshiva to truly and effectively deal with this culture that no one wants to speak about, it must finally break the silence.   RIETS Roshei HaYeshiva must come to grips with the fact that a significant portion of the students in their undergraduate institutions – some even in their shiurim - are habitual substance abusers, are sexually active, and are not subscribing to the same values as they are.  Student Services must cease perpetuating the charade that portrays the overwhelming majority of Yeshiva undergrads as fitting into a normative mold, and start discussing ways to reach out to those students whom until now it merely punished.  Most importantly, as a community, we need to awaken to the fact that our role as a Jewish educational institution requires us to follow the maxim of chanoch le’naar al pi darko – dealing with different cultures of students using substantively different and appropriate means.  

In this vein, two Yeshiva anecdotes stick out in my mind: one recent, and one from my first year on campus.  At the inaugural shiur of a RIETS Roshei HaYeshiva lecture series this year focusing on dating, the speaker began by informing his audience that he had addressed his remarks only to “people who learn in the Main Bais Medrash and the Annex” – referring to MYP students. 

Aside from the questionable assumption about the relative religious and cultural homogeneity of the student population learning in the Main Bais, this comment seemed destructive in its exclusion of non-MYP students.  No concurrent lecture on dating addressed to IBC students is planned, and the lack of regard for such students by this speaker is striking.  Though he may view speaking to a crowd of presumably non-shomer and even sexually active young men as beneath him, if these students are not his responsibility, then who is?  

On the flip side, I recall being sent as a sophomore reporter to cover a student workshop led by former Dean of Students Efrem Nulman on the topic of substance abuse.  The format involved students submitting anonymous questions, which would be answered frankly by the dean.  Fresh back from Israel, I naively assumed that substance abuse referred to drinking, tobacco, and of course, the occasional joint.  

Many of the questions, however, unabashedly focused on heroin, ecstasy and ‘shrooms, and Nulman answered each one with the patience and care of a Rosh HaYeshiva giving shiur.   At the time I was shocked by the brutal candor of the event, but I soon realized that Nulman preferred that students abusing hard-core drugs at least be prepared for the consequences of their actions.  To my knowledge, though, Student Services has held no such workshop since Nulman’s departure later that year.  Apparently, at Yeshiva, forewarned is no longer forearmed when there are questions of bad publicity at stake.

If taking the first step towards addressing the cultural climate that spawned the Purim incident requires that everyone in the Yeshiva family accept that such a culture exists, these stories delineate the path beyond such an admission.  If we accept that a significant portion of students is abusing drugs on campus, our first goal must be to educate them about the inherent dangers of such abuse.  If we admit that students are sexually active, we must ensure that all such students understand the importance of safe practices.  Ultimately, we must realize that saving lives and college careers is far more important than maintaining a faux rosy image in our own minds. 

The incident this past Purim can and should serve as a clarion call for us in every part of Yeshiva to candidly reassess the way in which we view both our schoolmates and ourselves.  Failure to do so could mean that the next time ABC comes to campus, the reporter will get his story, and then some.