Student Union held its first meeting of the Spring semester Monday – as usual, the meeting revolved around worn-out problems that the Union has been aspiring to fix for a while now, most notably medical amnesty. However, there were a few shining moments in the two-hour assembly. Off-campus issues took a front seat, exemplifying Union’s intent to include the entire student assembly in their agenda.
It’s no secret that off-campus students get the short end of the stick at Boston University. If they want to travel on campus to study, their only viable option is Mugar. Likewise, the BU Shuttle doesn’t travel past West Campus or even into Kenmore Square. Union President Arthur Emma admirably highlighted this fact in his initial synopsis Monday, hinting at a huge disconnect between BU and off-campus students.
Those who choose to live in Allston or on the skirts of South Campus don’t reap nearly as many benefits as on-campus students do, something Union seemed committed to addressing. But as much as that speaks to that particular subgroup of BU, it still cannot be considered realistic to believe the Department of Off-Campus Services will be allotted any more funding or support. It isn’t fair, but that’s capitalism: BU wants as much money from its students as it can get. Those who choose an alternative appear to value the perks of being independent rather than the perks of having an assortment of study halls to choose from.
At least off-campus discrepancies are new topics of conversation, in stark contrast with the all-too familiar medical amnesty contention. There’s no doubt that it would be beneficial to enact a policy that prevents any student from feeling afraid to get medical help after drinking too much underage or taking drugs. With that said, Union has been trying to implement this policy to no avail. At what point do they contemplate redundancy, or at least a change of approach?
For addressing these faults, Union deserves credit. The only problem lies in the way the organization undertakes faults. A good first step might be to include the potentially affected communities in decision-making and have a crack at collaboration. As of this moment, Union is just one of hundreds of clubs at BU with about as much power as the next.
This is an account occasionally used by the Daily Free Press editors to post archived posts from previous iterations of the site or otherwise for special circumstance publications. See authorship info on the byline at the top of the page.
