What I Learned About Politics on Campus

Extract

In the fall of 1986, I agreed to meet with a handful of students and a Policy Studies professor to discuss undergraduate education at Syracuse University. I had no idea that four years later I would be referred to as “founding member and president of Undergraduates for a Better Education.” I'm still trying to sort out what exactly happened and how it affected me. It's true that, in the beginning, I was idealistic and had hopes for great improvement at the university. It's also true that the more I learned about how the university works, the less confident I felt that anything could be accomplished by an energetic, but somewhat naive group of students. At this point, I'm wavering between “Wow. I was president of a national student organization” and “Higher education is a mess and it will always be a mess and what good did any of it do?” In spite of this indecision about what I actually accomplished, I have little doubt about what I learned.

Structural problems do largely account for a university's shortcomings. Many of our proposals for change were met with an administrator's explanation of logistical problems. At first, we were convinced that our ideas were being brushed away with excuses. I finally began to realize that there are serious structural problems in university communities which prevent even small changes from being made. One dean told us early on, “You fix one problem, you get twenty more.” I didn't really believe him at the time. Now I do. Also, there are structural problems in motivating students to take steps toward improvement. It's not easy to find a student who will complain about an incompetent professor who teaches a ridiculously easy course.