At a town hall with President Seligman on 3/31, I publicly embarrassed myself by telling our dear president the worst pun I could think of. It went down like this, “So since your name is Seligman, does that mean the men in your family are Seligmen?” To humor me, President Seligman maintained a blank stare for 3 seconds followed by laughter, and answered, “And the women are Seligwomen!” On the surface, I was overjoyed that he found my pun funny, but I was most definitely sweating bullets on the inside.
All jokes aside, the conversation between President Seligman and the student body was also attended by Dean Feldman and Dean Burns. It provided some insight to the future of the university, as well as addressed widespread issues that have been circulating around campus. First and foremost, College Town will open a supermarket in April, and it will be completely done with renovations and open by the end of the semester. We can also be expecting an expansion of Golisano’s Children Hospital, which has been able to deliver babies at the 23 weeks mark at the earliest.
After the news of a tuition increase, many students were displeased at the rate of increase of tuition, room, and board. Let’s be hoenst, no student would be happy about this unless there were money trees growing all over the Quad. President Seligman addressed the fact that this was the smallest percentage of tuition cost in the last 40 years, but it makes me wonder where the 2.8% is actually going. It would be nice to have a breakdown of the costs, especially since professors are only getting a 1.5 – 2.0 % increase on their wages, so what accounts for the rest of tuition increase?
President Seligman also addressed the presence of hateful remarks from the app Yik Yak, in which annonymous users can freely post anything they want. While the university acknowledges the existence of racist and sexist remarks found on Yik Yak, there isn’t really a solution to this problem except for the student body to start treating each other with mutual respect and stop “trolling.”
A range of topics such as the university’s use of fossil fuels and awareness for health issues within the lgbt community were also brought up by students. President Seligman did not hesitate to give out his email address to students who had legitimate concerns, and promised to do his best to keep the tuition increase rate low. I do wish the townhall could have been longer for him to stay and speak to students on a personal level. However, I was glad that he took the time to address recent issues, and I really hope that future students will get more oppotunities to interact with him. I mean, take me for an example, I did take a selfie with him after I told him my terrible pun.