Editorial : Getting involved on campus earlier means affecting more change
Flyers for hundreds of organizations clutter residence hall bulletin boards and the doors of bathroom stalls around campus. Messages in chalk on the Quad pique your interest momentarily, as do students in the Schine Student Center with clean, white email lists.
Few among us started college with a pointed vision of the life we hoped to carve out at Syracuse University or the mark we intended to leave. And as freshmen, the number of ways to become active locally or on campus becomes paralyzing. You will inevitably attend far too many introduction meetings and put your email down on too many listservs. But the price of inertia is too high; students on this campus can be agents of real change, on campus and off, so get going.
This campus is not static; turnover in students, directors, professors and priorities make SU dynamic and malleable. As your home, a very expensive home, for the next four years, the best way to capitalize on the college experience is to take on responsibility and take ownership of a piece of this community. On this microcosm of real life, you can become a leader and build a confidence and competence that will transcend graduation.
Start by gaining some institutional memory. Get to know your student government, how it works and what they can do for you. Read campus publications, from niche magazines to The Daily Orange, listen to campus radio stations and read student blogs. Learn the difference between the University Senate, the administration and the Board of Trustees. Talk to your professors; recruit them as friends and mentors.
Learn why Syracuse, despite its economic depression, remains a hub for artistic and entrepreneurial potential and how Chancellor Nancy Cantor has put SU at the helm of its revitalization. Don’t scoff at The Post-Standard with your New York Times in hand — this is your city now.
The sooner you start the better. Many upperclassmen look around at their accomplishments and ponder what more they could have done had they simply started sooner. In four years, your diploma should not be a list of grades and an item on your resume, but the culmination of four years of breakthroughs and failures, lessons from mentors and followers of your own. Make SU put you on its resume. What matters is not what you do but that you’ve poured your talents into something.
