Acorn

Issue date: 5/2/08 Section: News

President Bob Weisbuch

The Acorn sat down with President Bob Weisbuch to hear his thoughts on important issues concerning the future of the evolving Drew community. Touching upon issues ranging from diversity to the decision to make SAT scores optional, Weisbuch gives students a glimpse into what's been done, what's left to do and how he grades the progress he's made in his past three years in office.



Human Rights policy

It's going to the Senate this week. The reason why it took so long is because there are many theories of human rights policies. There are two in particular, and we really wanted to weigh those and talk about them. One heads toward being punitive, and the other heads toward being exhortatory. So we really had to think anew, which took some time. And then we had to check it out with our lawyer, and see whether what we're saying would pass muster in a legal way if we ever need to act on it. And a legal review takes twice as long as you'd expect, but it's done.

Diversity

We're a much more diverse campus than we were two and a half years ago. We've become a more diverse campus, I believe, more quickly than any college or university in the history of higher education. Isn't that something we ought to be celebrating more? Granting that nothing's perfect, and we have more work to do to make diversity of demographics you feel in the fabric of life here, it's working out very well. Academically, socially, it's working out better than I imagined. To see that we're becoming to mirror population of the streets and cities in America, and that we've done that not by changing the character of theplace, but by having each new student grow with the character of the place.



SAT

We've changed to a policy of, if you want to shows us your SATs, great, if you want to show us something more truly indicative of your promise of college success, we'd rather see that. But whatever you want to show us, we'll look at. And that's been working wonderfully.



Challenge to Students

We need to create something way beyond the human rights policy. We need a code for our community, we need something to live up to. I want to call upon the new SGA administration, and this administration and faculty and staff to work together toward a code that's not like the one in Daniel's Dictionary, but more about a vision of the model community that Drew should be. I want this to evolve into a code that we live and think about, and that it actually changes our daily behavior. So when something comes up like whether we should have cigarettes in the bookstore, or when there's some kind of harassment of any kind, we're able to relate it to an overall sense of what life ought to be like on campus.

Continued...

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