Esteemed administrators and faculty, fellow students, and members of the Baruch community, I’d like to thank you all for this opportunity to discuss our vision. We are all fortunate to be members of Baruch College, a superb institution with a nationally renowned business program. However, even the greatest continue to need improvement. That is why we have come here tonight: to propose a few changes. But before we jump right into them, I would like to ask you all to close your eyes for a moment. Imagine a perfect college. . It has beautiful scenery with freshly cut grass and evergreen trees on campus, where students can easily take a five-minute walk to and from their dorms. Students are in no rush traveling from class to class, and they are in an environment that is stress free, allowing them to focus on their studies. Now open your eyes and look around. Unfortunately, Baruch is not that college, but it can be. With your help, here tonight, we can begin to address some of the issues that have come up over these past few years, such as the elevators, the dorms, and the lack of greenery. I am confident that we can solve these issues, which will make a huge step towards building a better Baruch.

 

 

 

We leave here in hope of change. We hope you will keep our speech in mind as you consider how to make your, and our, school even better. It is time to renovate these elevators, to make the dorms feel closer to home and to truly make Baruch home- everybody’s home. Imagine walking outside of your dormitory and getting on a free shuttle that drops you off right in front of your school. After taking your ID card and walking through the revolving doors, you see no lines for the elevators and you decide to take it all the way to the top, since you have time before your next class. You get off at the top floor, the “green-roof” and you find a nice bench underneath a tree, where you sit down to review your notes before class. This is something that seems almost impossible, but can absolutely be achieved. We would like this to be an ordinary day at Baruch College, but we need your help in order to make that possible. Since the renovations of the Newman Vertical Campus, student loyalty has sky rocketed, with the first year student retention rate currently standing at 91%. If the same is done for the Lawrence and Eris Building, the students and administration will benefit greatly from the changes, but we need your support and help. We can achieve these changes, because if we did it once- we can do it again. And I assure you, we can…no, rather we WILL do it again, because we must. For the students. For us. For Baruch.