Dr. Hill’s explanation of the Rose Scholars program and the many comments by the scholars during the café provided a great deal of food for thought concerning the future of Rose House. I thought I’d use my blog post to give my own feedback on the Scholars program, since I was a bit quiet during the café itself.

1. Social Events: I think more events designed with the purpose of encouraging socialization between Rose residents would create a more cohesive community and identity for the Rose system. I have actually never held a conversation with another Rose Scholar at a Rose Scholar event. This might be a result of the types of events I have participated in (films, Rose Cafés, and lectures), and maybe some of the Saturday excursions have more socialization, but I would appreciate some events expressly created for that purpose.
2. Food Events: Food-focused events, like cookie decorating or dumpling making would make for great social events, and it is still possible to make these activities more “scholarly” by teaching the scholars about the culture or science behind the food.
3. Plant-Based Food: As another scholar mentioned during the café, if there are food-based events next semester, it would be great if there were vegan options as well. It’s pretty frustrating that even at the cafés, there are no vegan snacks or non-dairy milk/creamer.
4. Films: During the first semester, I was pretty frustrated with the selection of movies we could see with the Rose Scholars at the cinema, since the events were almost always for documentaries. All films, not just documentaries, have intellectual and artistic value. I’ve appreciated that this semester there has been a lot more variety in the cinema films available for scholars. However, I am a still quite confused by many of the choices. For example, this week, the Cornell Cinema is showing both Pulp Fiction, an extremely popular movie among college students, and Daughters of the Dust, a influential film that would likely stimulate discussions about race and gender, but the Scholar event is Pablo Lorraine’s Neruda. As a biopic, Neruda does have educational value, but it strikes me as likely to be the least popular of the three among scholars.
5. Scholarly Event Topics: While the café speakers have all been very interesting, I have found the range of topics to be rather narrow. Most of the speakers have spoken about either food or politics. With this semester’s smaller café format and encouragement of scholar participation, I often feel that I have little to contribute in discussions because my studies have not been in these fields. I would appreciate if we had speakers from a wider range of academic backgrounds. I’m an engineer, so I would actually really like to have some engineers/engineering professors come in.
6. Rose House Identity: I understand that one of the goals of the Scholars program is to cultivate a unique Rose House identity. However, I don’t really understand what type of culture we are trying to create. Is Rose House supposed to be the intellectual house? The pre-professional house? I think the house that is closest to having a unique culture is Cook. Cook is seen as the “international” house because of (1) the language house (2) multi-cultural house events (3) those flags in the dining hall. I think if Rose wants to establish its own culture it should learn from Cook and host events that promote that culture. Or add something quirky to the dining hall decor.
7. Regular Input: Finally, I agree with other scholars’ suggestions for monthly/weekly input on the events that will be offered. I always see posters for interesting events around campus and would appreciate if there were an easy way to communicate my interest to those who organize the events.

Overall, I have thoroughly enjoyed being a Rose Scholar for these past two semesters. The program has given me a great incentive to attend lectures and see films when I otherwise wouldn’t have, and guaranteed housing is a blessing in Ithaca.