Iowa State’s administrators, professors and student government continue to have very little ability to measure and respond to the broader needs of students. There just seems to be no mechanism that allows students’ feelings on important subjects to impact, in a timely fashion, how the university operates.

Imagine if, immediately after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, a student had raised his or her hand in class to ask the professor to discuss how the events related to the course material, only to be told that the issue would be better discussed outside of class, or that the counseling center would be a better venue.

Yet the prospect of discussing the trend of school shootings migrating from secondary schools to universities, or, in my case, after the 2004 Veishea riot, discussing the 210 “party riots” at mostly large land-grant universities since the drinking age went up, is not deemed worthy enough of class time by administrators or professors.

An acquaintance of mine told me that in 2001 her professor took tons of time out of class to talk about Sept. 11, even folding it into the curriculum, and it was a dance class. Yet the prospects of a similar attack on a college campus seem far less likely than shootings and riots.

University administrators and professors from across the nation copy each other’s student management techniques using the mantra of “best practices,” which is just another word for mediocrity. Talk about missing a teachable moment to build a better democracy. What is needed are “great practices,” but these can only come from the students themselves.

Students are not obligated to adapt to the status quo of university life. Students of public universities, because they are adults, have the right, as long as they do not break the law, to demand, in a positive and prosocial fashion, that their universities be more responsive.

With this said, two glaring problems exist within the GSB and the student body. There do not seem to be any innovative student leaders willing to come forward and strong enough to seek office for the purpose of redefining the political landscape;ÿand there is an absence of a motivated student electorate brave enough to break out of their old patterns in order to organize, vote and follow.

Jon Shelness

Graduate Student

Interdisciplinary Graduate Studies