If you are an avid reader of campus news publications, you are well aware that this was an important week for Boston University. Not one, but three building dedication ceremonies took place at various sites of campus: the Alan and Sherry Leventhal Center on Tuesday, the Yawkey Center for Student Services on Thursday and the Sumner M. Redstone Building of the BU School of Law on Friday.
If you are not an avid reader of campus news publications, you are probably extremely confused as to why there is a sign outside of 100 Bay State Road referring to this well-known establishment as the “Yawkey Center for Student Services.”
In fact, take a closer look at some of these high-profile building dedications and you may notice that these buildings are not new to the BU campus at all. The Leventhal Center is the Admissions Receptions Center, which opened in March, the Redstone Building was finished over the summer and has already admitted a class of students and the Yawkey Center is the Center for Student Services, casually known as “Bay State,” is the home of two-story dining hall Marciano Commons, the writing center and other student services, which students have been frequenting since fall 2012.
“We expect that the Yawkey Center for Student Services will become as familiar to students as Yawkey Way is to the armies of Red Sox fans,” BU President Robert Brown said Thursday at the Yawkey Center’s naming ceremony. “I’m confident that in time, the name Yawkey will become the shorthand for the place where students commune…grab a meal, study together, find out about an internship or just hang out.”
That’s a nice sentiment, but students have been communing, grabbing meals, studying and taking full advantage of the Center for Student Services since it first opened two years ago. What’s more, it is doubtful many students were aware of the building’s renaming.
Each building dedication was marked by a high-profile ceremony attended by the administration and the donors of each “new” establishment. Brown and various other BU administrators spoke at each one, usually remarking on how each building and their accompanying programs will benefit the students of BU, which they will. The renaming of the Yawkey Center came with a $10 million internship program, sponsored by the Yawkey Foundation (hence the new name) where 100 gifted students, dubbed “Yawkey Scholars,” will receive paid internships at non-profit organizations who are unable to compensate interns themselves.
“It’s going to provide opportunities for students who otherwise wouldn’t be able to afford to do an unpaid internship to do so,” said BU Provost Jean Morrison at the Thursday ceremony. “We know from all the data we see about how students not only complete their studies, but then succeed as they go on, that internships are a critical piece of that.”
Despite the fact that most of these buildings are purported to serve the students, these dedication ceremonies were not open to the student population, who may have been interested in learning more about these “new” additions to the campus. Although they were covered by BU Today and The Daily Free Press, students were largely left out of the ceremonies, expected to merely read about these events as outsiders instead of actively take part in them.
And how about the fact that these exclusive dedications also all took place within the same week, despite none of them being new? Unless there was some crazy scheduling mishap, it’s safe to say that Alumni Weekend, which ended Sunday, was the primary motivation for cramming all of these dedications in the same week. Understandably, BU would want to flaunt its high-tech new stomping grounds to its alumni, but it seems like a bit of a stretch to celebrate a building that opened in 2012.
It’s fair for BU to want to show off how much the university has advanced, and it’s fair for the administrators and donors who brought these construction blueprints and funded programs into fruition to want to pat themselves on the back for their successes, but perhaps BU should remember to include its current students in the celebrations.
