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. Before we begin, I’d like to ask you to close your eyes: Imagine an open area, with plenty of greens, a few benches, perhaps even some walkways and flowers for reflection. On one end, a small group is testing the power of the wind with a small apparatus constructed in a physical science class. Standing on a bench, a young man practices a public speech. Two women gather footage for a campaign proposal for the city parks. In the center a large group pours over the great works of Shakespeare. Here is a community of scholars, coming together for the common purpose of knowledge, progress, and innovation. Their conversations and debates extend beyond the class time and into their social and their everyday routines. Now open your eyes. Welcome back to Manhattan. For years, the vision we have just taken you through has been the ideal university and perhaps the standard for the liberal arts college.
We are fortunate and proud to be members of Baruch College. We do not want to be Harvard. We do not want to be UC Berkeley. We do not want to be Wesleyan. We want to be Baruch. We are a superb institution with a nationally renowned business program; we are public; we are diverse; and we are CUNY. Perhaps with the realities of Manhattan (space and high cost of living), public institution (bureaucracy and budgets) being Baruch seems totally distant than that ideal we saw with our eyes closed. With our eyes open Baruch is a commuter school, a vertical campus, with people constantly rushing to and from jobs, families, more jobs, the trains, class, internships, and committees. We are aware that the college is about to undergo some major renovations, and we have come here to say that as you consider those changes, we believe that being Baruch doesn’t have to be so distant from that ideal. We believe that building a better Baruch must involve keeping in mind not necessarily that exact image of the ideal but its underlying principle of a scholarly community that integrates the academics of the classroom and the learning of everyday life and nature. There are many ways to accomplish this goal, but we stand here today in hopes of offering a few ideas. We have targeted areas that we, as students, are passionate about, and we appreciate your taking these ideas into serious consideration.
Baruch College has over 17,000 students. With such a large student body on a relatively small campus, overcrowding in elevators is a common problem. What makes this problem worse, are the sluggish and outdated elevators in the Lawrence and Eris Field building. In between class times, the lines in the lobby are so outrageous that the security guards spend time having to delegate and maintain the flow of traffic. Instead of focusing on their primary responsibility of ensuring the safety and well-being of students and faculty, they must become traffic officers. This issue significantly impacts the efficiency of the students’ education.
We are grateful to hear that money is being allotted to resolve this issue. However, we do have some suggestions on how to make the construction run smoother and how to decrease the flow of traffic when the new elevators are up and running. Currently, we do not even use all of the elevators, since two of them are broken. Therefore, fixing those elevators first would not affect traffic in the lobby. Then, once renovations on those two are complete, they would be put into use and another two elevators would be worked on. This pattern would go on until all the elevators are fixed, having never decreased the number of elevators available.
Once all of the elevators are up and running, Baruch could consider implementing express elevators. For example, of the six elevators in the building, two can make stops to all of the floors in the building, another two can make stops between floors two and eight, and the remaining two can run express from the lobby and make stops between floors nine through sixteen. This system of express elevators in the Field Building will improve the flow of traffic in the elevators.
Another issue is that of the lateral position of the dorms. The college is located on 23rd street and Lexington, while the dorms are all the way on 97th street and 3rd, 70 blocks away, which equates to a half hour commute if the students are lucky. Often students aren’t so fortunate, due to train delays. This, compounded with the extra costs of taking the transit, makes the dorm location problematic.
A logical solution to this distance dilemma is to emulate the City College of New York and implement a shuttle bus service. While a shuttle bus service won’t physically make the dorms and college closer, it will create a feeling of closeness. It is possible that one day the CUNY system will do a major reorganization of their dorm system and switch the Baruch dorms with the Hunter dorms that are located near Baruch, thus making each place of residence closer to its respective college. However, right now what a shuttle bus service will allow the students to do, is to travel to and from school in an easy fashion.
Of course, simply stating that shuttle buses should be implemented fails to take into account the actual method of doing so. The financial burden it would take must be taken into consideration. The shuttle bus service would run three times in the morning and three times in the evening. We propose that each student who dorms could pay approximately $500 more a year to cover for most of the cost, including the cost of the buses, bus driver salaries, and cost of gas. Dormers already have to pay around $800 a year for subway fare, so paying the $500 would actually save them money, along with creating a genuine dorming experience.
Another important issue that needs to be addressed at Baruch is the lack of on-campus greenery. Aside from the few trees lining the block, there isn’t a sufficient amount of greenery in or around the Baruch campus. Not only does greenery provide a pleasant atmosphere, but it also has many practical benefits.
The advantages that greenery can provide to students are aplenty. In fact, a study done by mental health experts at the University of Exeter Medical School showed that greenery can significantly lower stress levels and improve mental health in the long run. For example, researchers found that as people moved to neighborhoods with more greenery, their mental health was enhanced for a minimum of three years. Think of the impact this can have on the Baruch community. By incorporating greenery into the Baruch campus, we can improve the mental health of our student body.
One way to incorporate greenery is to plant trees around the campus. This could have a major impact on students during times of high stress, like finals week. In fact, we could even bring in some people from “Million Trees NYC,” a volunteer program dedicated to planting 1 million trees in NYC, to come down to 23rd and Lexington Avenue and help create a greener campus. We can look to City College, another CUNY school in Manhattan, for a model of incorporating greenery. We acknowledge that Baruch has limited campus space, nowhere near as much as CCNY’s 35 acres, but there are always other alternatives such as bringing in pots of flowers that we can consider.
Our choices aren’t limited. Even in the busy city of New York City, there are various ways to approach incorporating greenery into the campus and funding these projects. The cost of any project to add more greenery to the campus should not prevent Baruch from taking action for what is important- improving the lives of the students. A change in scenery can benefit the mental health of students and faculty as well as help increase productivity among the student body.
We leave here in hopes of change. We hope you will keep our speech in mind as you consider how to make this school—our school—even better. It is time to renovate, build community, and increase access, to make Baruch home- everybody’s home. We could say it’s impossible to make such an ideal vision of a campus community at Baruch, but we know that the impossible is only a series of smaller possibles. Before the renovations of the Newman Vertical Campus, think about how many said it was impossible for Baruch to secure a place as a graduating four year institution, let alone a prominent place in the lower east side skyline. However, now Baruch is in the sky and student loyalty has skyrocketed, with the first year student retention rate currently standing at 91%. If the same is done for the Lawrence and Eris Building, we think Baruch could soar. We can achieve these changes; if we did it once- we can do it again. For the students. For us all. For Baruch.