This week’s Rose Cafe was an honest and open discussion about the Rose Scholars program. It was a great and refreshing opportunity to discuss the program and what it is like living in Rose House in general and it was interesting to hear different peoples opinions on the program. Here is some feedback and thoughts I have regarding the program:
- I agree with many other people’s blogs that we need more events with smaller time commitments. I ended up mostly attending Rose Cafe as it was the shortest event and happened every week at the same time so I actually just put it in my Wednesday evening time slot in my calendar for my own convenience of having a fixed schedule. On days where I haven’t been able to attend Rose Cafe, I struggled to find another event to attend that is interesting to me, is of a reasonable duration, and at a time that works for me. Unfortunately, as much as I wish I had more time to spend exploring Cornell and Ithaca and enriching my experience here, I simply don’t have time to visit the plantations for half a day. There should be more events which are shorter and interesting on a regular basis, so that people actually go to events other than the cafés and learn and immerse themselves in Rose and the Cornell/Ithaca area- which is the very purpose of the program.
- Another major criticism I have is why the ‘Feminism and Food for Thought’ weekly program (that is always featured on the ‘What’s Happening email) does not count as a Scholars event. I would personally love to attend this series and gain credit for it. As a passionate feminist, I believe that it is crucial for us to discuss issues of gender and sexuality. It is absolutely imperative for more people to engage in conversation about feminism. Considering there have been other Rose Scholars events that touch on feminism, as well as a variety of intellectually stimulating topics like economic development, globalization, etc, I don’t understand why this series does not count as a Scholars event. It strikes me as perhaps subconsciously/accidentally sexist to dismiss this fascinating series and exclude it from being a Scholars event, when it is so relevant and in line with the other events that do count for the program.
I very much agree with the need for events with shorter time commitments. For instance, I had always been interested in doing a volunteering event, but they always took up so much time, so I never ended up doing one. However, I do understand that some of the events do need the amount of time that is set. For instance, last fall I went on the Saturday excursion to go apple picking. This was, I believe, a four-hour event. I really wanted to go apple picking, so I just dealt with the long time, but I remember thinking, “Why do we need four hours to go apple picking?” I soon discovered the answer was because it took about an hour to get there (we walked to the commons, then took a bus to the orchard, which was located on West Hill, right near the hospital), and another hour to get back. So the actual time we had to go apple picking was completely reasonable. So I guess I understand why some of the events have such long time commitments, however some of the time lengths still seem unnecessarily long. Like you were saying, we don’t need four hours to walk around the plantations–I ended up not going to this event for this very reason, even though I have yet to explore the plantations and I would really like to.