Sunday, March 19, 2000

my album

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

Photo added 18-Feb-04

Photo added 30-Jan-04

tin foil

trippy

she-ra

kermit

cutbacks

grumpy bear

israel flag

aliza @ 5

koby @ 3

purple rain

validated RSS

beckett 2

beckett

johnny damon

the wall

wil

griffins

dust bunny

redmeat

dilbert

dido

my buddies 2 copy

spike

spike and angel

sexy heels

rainbow

big splash

me and grandma

my buddies

us on beach

debbie

baby boy davis

eddie

serious me

baby dani

BS

avocado

beatles

noogie

me

kids purim

b/w sunflower

BS guns movie

color sunflower

BS guns

Saturday, March 18, 2000

my buddies 2 copy

spike

spike and angel

sexy heels

my album

. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .

rainbow

big splash

me and grandma

my buddies

us on beach

debbie

baby boy davis

eddie

serious me

baby dani

BS

avocado

beatles

noogie

me

kids purim

b/w sunflower

BS guns movie

color sunflower

BS guns

Photo added 18-Feb-04

Photo added 30-Jan-04

tin foil

trippy

she-ra

kermit

cutbacks

grumpy bear

israel flag

aliza @ 5

koby @ 3

purple rain

validated RSS

beckett 2

beckett

johnny damon

the wall

wil

griffins

dust bunny

redmeat

dilbert

dido

Saturday, January 1, 2000

reasons for leaving

I left Stern for a multitude of reasons.  I was extremely undecided as to a future path, and instead of receiving guidance geared towards my personality, intellect, and future goals, I was told that I am simply not the college type and should consider dropping out.


 


I found the administration and staff to have priorities that did not include me as student, making it hard for me to find my way – even on an academic level.  Teachers had no time to talk about guidance, and the guidance counselors were over-booked and uncaring.  I was put in the position of ‘bad guy’ for being adrift.  I was also misinformed about my status regarding Judaic Studies credits, and suddenly after two years the mistake was caught – which resulted in the need to tack on two extra years of Judaic Studies alone for me to graduate.  I am a terrible student when uninspired, and two years of classes which I find stifling would only result in my failing out of school.


 


In my fist semester I was very unhappy, and I totally failed my classes.  Nobody approached me to discuss it, nobody tried to help.  As I was walking towards school the next semester, I passed a dean on the street and mentioned to her my interest in applying for a position in a club at Stern.  Her exact response was “You’re not applying for anything.  You’re being kicked out of school.  A letter’s in the mail to you.”  There I stood, in the middle of the street, shocked, surrounded by students and staff on their way to lunch.  Forget the confidentiality issue for a moment, and picture yourself in that position.


 


I later met with Dean Bacon and the issue was cleared up, and I was fully reinstated.


 


One year later, I was living in the Windsor apartments.  It was the night before our last day of classes Erev Yom Kippur.  I went to see a play and got back at 11 pm.  When I walked into my apartment, there was small party going on – music, alcohol, boys, smoking.  I went directly into my room where my roommate was sitting on her bed, and asked her what was going on out there.  She told me that when she got home it had already been going on, and she had opted to hide in our room, on the phone, until it ended.  I joined her, and we waited the party out.  At 2:30 am, we were exhausted enough to risk the wrath of the party-goers, and we kicked them out – not without a lot of cursing and general verbal abuse coming our way.  The next day I told my parents what had happened, and they told me to lay down the law in the apartment.


 


It was about two months after the incident that my roommates and I were called in to meet with the head of Student Life.  The head of security stood over us as if we were felons, and she began to tell us that we had been caught breaking school rules.  She then asked us if we knew what she was referring to.  I had been chosen as spokesperson by my roommates, and I replied that we knew, we had handled it, and it would not happen again.  She asked me if we had all been involved in the party, and I told her that we had not.  She then gave us a choice - we could all get in trouble, or the girl who had thrown the party could step forward.  She also asked us to name the other Stern students who had attended the party.   The girl chose not to step forward, and the rest of us refused to implicate anyone right then.  The head of student life then told us that she would be calling each of our parents.


 


My father was in Israel, running a tour, when he received the call.  As you may appreciate, he was very angry at the idea of a general punishment.  He felt that because we were never told how to react to such a scenario, the school could not hold us accountable for not doing what they would have expected.  The expectations of the school were that we should have either left, called security, or kicked everyone out immediately.  At eleven pm.  Where were the four of us to go?  I urge you to think back to when you were in college.  Would you have thought to call security on your roommate?  And would you have tried to break up a party in full throttle, thereby upsetting 25 or so drunk people?


 


We attempted to regroup after the meeting and discuss what we should do, because as much as we didn’t’ want o turn the girl over, we didn’t want to take the fall for something we had not been involved in.  The girl who had thrown the party didn’t come to the meeting – she went uptown to another party.  We were at our wits end.  We decided to encourage her to turn herself in, and if that failed, to turn her over.  We had been threatened that if the girl were not named, we would immediately be kicked out of the dorms.  To put that in perspective, the four of us were from Nebraska, California, Pennsylvania, and Moraco.  The next morning I told the girl that either I could turn her over, which would result in a harsh punishment, or she could step forward, which would result in leniency, as had been promised me by the head of Student Life.  The girl chose to step forward.  The result?  We each got a citation placed in out file that stated that we had broken school rules, and if we did it again, we would be subject to either getting kicked out of the dorms, or dismissal from the school.  The citation remained until graduation for each one of us.  A week later I found my roommate’s boyfriend in the apartment.  After giving her 30 seconds to get him out, I called my parents and asked them to help me find an apartment in Washington Heights where my academic life wouldn’t be threatened by my roommates, and where I wouldn’t need to act as a spy.


 


I moved to Washington Heights immediately.  I was much happier with the chevra.  My academic life began to pick up, until the morning vans started to get cancelled.  This resulted in a last minute scramble to the subway and my being late to class numerous times.  The whole convenience of living in the Heights disappeared with no easy transportation to school.  The school also made it very hard to be single and not living in the dorm.  I had to get special allowances almost every night to take the late vans when I was involved with SCDS, and my friends got in trouble for taking the morning vans back from my apartment to school on the assumption that they had stayed at a guy’s apartment.  It was extremely unpleasant.


 


I was also discouraged last year from becoming editor-in-chief of the HaMevaser magazine because I wear pants.  I was told by a dean that I had the wrong image.  No female co-editor-in-chief was ever chosen, which spun horribly out of control into a political nightmare, painting the mostly male staff as sexist.  The women on the other side who were involved were encouraged in their views by the very same Dean who had advised me not to take the position.  This may be a minor footnote to you from last year, but it was very hurtful to those involved, on both sides.


 


After all this, when I informed both the guidance counselor and the Dean of Students that I would be leaving the school, which was a very hard decision for me to make, I was met with relief, and essentially shown the door.


 


I hope that my experiences were the exception to the rule.  My family has generally been happy with YU until I got there – my brother, sister, and brother-in-law are all graduates of YU.  It saddens me to leave a Jewish institution with such bitter memories.  I simply had no alternative.  I found myself ostracized – both within the student body and the staff – for reaching out to students who were less religious than me.  I had thought that achdus was a natural part of Stern, much as it had been during my two years in Israel.  It was a terrible disappointment.


 


I love and support what YU stands for and attempts to do, and hope that Stern will start to follow a more productive way of encouraging Yiddishkeit and academic success on campus.  The mind and soul of a person can not be judged by silly externalities.  That being said –


I need to thank Rabbi Blau for being available and giving on target personal and halachic advice, and truly caring for the YU community.  I would also like to thank the staff at the office of the registrar, the security guards, cafeteria workers, and janitors for always having a smile and a kind word for every student.  They have exemplified the spirit that should permeate Stern College and is, tragically, lacking.


 


I understand that there is a particular type of student that the administration prefers to deal with.  But that does not mean that the rest of us can be written off.  The reality is that the Modern Orthodox world is changing and growing, and all new kinds of women will be attending Stern in the near future.  I hope that the deans, staff, guidance counselors, teachers, and current student body can adjust, learn to accommodate, and appreciate people for who they are and who they are trying to be.  The job of a University is to make the most out of their students, not just the students who are the best candidates to fit their favorite molds.  YU failed me as a school, and it just shouldn’t have happened.


 


                                                                                                            - Daniela L. Weiss