Last week I attended the open forum for the Rose Scholars program. This forum provided the Rose Scholars with the opportunity to have an open discussion about the program and suggest potential changes for future years. We also discussed the role of the program in the overall purpose of the West Campus community.
Overall, I have enjoyed be a part of the Rose Scholars program, and believe that attending the lectures and events, in addition to being part of the smaller Rose Scholar community, has positively impacted my time at Cornell this year. However, I do think that there are things about the program that could be changed. First of all, I think it is important to encourage a greater sense of community within the scholars, may that be via Scholar-only event or “forced bonding” activities. Second, I think it is important that there be a greater variety of times/events at specific time slots for people with busier schedules.
In terms of the role of the program within the context of West Campus’ goal, I think that there need to be changes made which promotes unity within Rose house as well as a specific culture for the house itself. It seems that removing the sign-up parameter for events would improve attendance of non-Rose Scholars, and creating more “social” events that are tied to an academic event would be beneficial to creating a more potent sense of community and encourage attendance.
In the discussion of the West Campus system as a whole, I think there were many points made which would improve the “house loyalty” concern within the community. In may other institutions, there is a much stronger house system, and I think it should be a goal of Cornell to develop this. Ways to do this include developing unique house cultures, including freshman in the West Campus System, e.g. each house adopting North Campus residences, as well as encouraging competition between houses. I personally think this sense of competition would encourage people to root for their houses and in turn increase the sense of community and loyalty within the system. While the development of house sports teams did not work here in the past, I think that some kind of game show, Family Feud, Jeopardy, etc., in which each house had a competing team, would be more successful as it lends itself better to the student culture here at Cornell.
I have enjoyed being a part of the Rose Scholars Program and West Campus System here at Cornell, but I do think there are changes which should be made. I hope that some of these changes can be made so that, in the future, the system will reach the point where it is fully achieving its goal.