— STAFF EDITORIAL —
Advising Advice
Remember the good old days when you were a high school senior? It was the summer before your freshman year of college and you perused the campus with your family and your soon-to-be classmates.
You took the very important placement tests and listened to the many life-changing speeches (or just texted your friends back home about how bored you were). Then you got the chance to meet your advisor, the person who was supposedly going to help you excel and breeze through college.
This moment would be one that you would remember for your whole life. Your advisor asked you about your past and what you expected/wanted for the future. You answered their questions because you felt like you two were going to be best friends for the next four years. How things can change so fast.
Academic advising has its benefits it helps guide freshmen onto the right track in the beginning of their long and complex college career. An academic advisor is one individual with whom a freshman interacts on a regular basis. The issue that the Newswire has is whether or not academic advising has recently lost its importance, and what changes or modifications can be done to help make academic advising useful once again.
The Newswire is going out on a limb in saying that we feel that students only seek their academic advisor when it comes time to schedule for the next term. So based on this information, students may only see their academic advisors twice in an academic school year.
But wait, there’s more. With that thing called the Internet, students can register on-line for the upcoming school year if they don’t have a hold or any other problems with their account. If a student were to choose this option, they may never see their academic advisor. At other schools, a whole day is taken out of the semester in order for students to meet with their advisors to discuss their plans for the next term.
Another idea the Newswire considered was to have each program assign mentors (either Xavier alumni or local professionals in the field) who could meet with students once a month to talk about life and career plans.
The academic advisor was once a companion that helped the student excel and prosper. Today, students sometimes don’t even feel like their advisor cares about their well-being. It is apparent that in order for academic advising to gain value again, it needs an upgrade.
Since college students spend a good portion, or maybe all, of their time on-line either using AIM or Facebook, the Newswire suggests that academic advisors use these sources to stay in contact with their students. You would be surprised by how a simple Facebook message or even a “poke” could improve the student/advisor relationship.
Students: think about how often you see and talk with your own academic advisor. Academic advisors: open your eyes so that you can better advise and mentor your students. The Newswire believes that academic advising should be like the Jedi Order, with the academic advisors being the Jedi Knights and the students being Padawans aiming to become Jedi Knights themselves. So as you prepare your schedule and talk with your advisor, “May the Force be with you.”
Xavier “buries” legend
In his article last week, Brian Bowsher wrote about the immense dedication John DeFoor has to Xavier and his students, and relayed that John wasn’t likely to retire anytime soon, instead that they would have to bury him first.
Well, it appears that is exactly what the Xavier Music Department plans to do.
After DeFoor’s 24 years of service and dedication to the university and his students, the Xavier Music Department, headed by Dr. Kaleel Skeirik, has decided to pursue a new faculty member to teach Music Education and possibly replace John DeFoor as the head of the Jazz studies program.
While the replacement has not been named, they have informed John that any replacement with any background in Jazz will take over the Jazz Ensemble and John will not be invited back to teach at Xavier next year.
Xavier fans boo people like Thad Matta who leave Xavier for the prospect of making more money, so certainly we could cheer and celebrate people like John DeFoor who sacrifice so much for his students and Xavier. No, instead, Xavier University looks the other way as someone who has done so much in his quarter century at this campus is told he will be fired ‘if’ they happen to hire someone who is minimally qualified to do his job.
So this great educator of jazz now has to sit by and wonder if this could be his last year here at Xavier. For at any moment, a phone call could come that would tell him that after 24 years, his services are no longer needed.
There would be no time for a farewell show, or time for his current and former students to come together to celebrate the career of John DeFoor. Instead, Dr. Skeirik and the rest of the music department will just kick John right out the back door like he is a piece of trash.
As members of this university, we should feel ashamed of what we are idly sitting by and letting happen to a celebrated faculty member. The unprofessional and dishonest actions by Dr. Skeirik are a disgrace to John DeFoor, his students and this entire university.
After all John has done for this university, I feel the least we owe him is the ability to walk away from his position and his students in a manner that he sees fit at a time that he feels ready to walk away. I urge the music department to rethink their decision on this matter and show some respect to a fellow colleague. There is no reason to bury John DeFoor when he is still very much alive.
Mike Spillane
Class of ‘08
Women’s history under SAC attack
As a female student at Xavier University, you cannot imagine my abject shock and horror when reading about “Women’s Week: Chicks in Charge” on the portal. First, let me clear the air…I am a feminist and I am not opposed to calling myself that because I believe strongly in social, political and economic equality of the sexes.
At a university that has had incredibly strong initiative in the field of women’s issues lately, particularly regarding the creation of a Women’s Center on our campus, and last semester’s “1 in 4 Day,” I cannot believe that the Student Activities Council feels it is appropriate or even up to the standards of our institution to have a week called “Chicks in Charge” during Women’s History Month.
The month of March was dedicated to the celebration of women’s history because the contributions of women were largely overlooked for such a long period of time. Perhaps it makes sense to some to celebrate the inclusion of women into our social consciousness with Pretty Pretty Princess playing, sipping on mocktails and eating chocolate, but this does not seem fitting to me.
During a month that is dedicated to the empowerment of women, I would hope that SAC could find something a bit more substantive than putting on a Girl’s Night for us female students, whilst we receive manicures and facials and gossip about boys. I find this assessment of my needs as a female student during Women’s History Month incredibly insensitive and demeaning.
I know that I find fulfillment in many activities and discussions outside Johnny Depp movies, and I encourage SAC to cater to the needs of students like myself who wish to cast away the stereotypes of what womanhood and femininity entail. Even in SAC’s speaker series, SAC listed one of Rosa Blackwell’s credentials as being the “former First Lady of Cincinnati.”
Couldn’t you have found a local female politician instead of a woman who was given a title because her husband was the mayor? Indeed, that inclusion on Mrs. Blackwell’s résumé tarnishes her significantly more substantial position as the Superintendent of Cincinnati Public Schools and they should not even be mentioned next to one another as her “achievements.”
Overall, I would say that SAC most definitely dropped the ball for this year’s Women’s History Month. I hope in light of this, you can focus on constructive programming that sees fit to empower women instead of placing them in stereotypical, categorical boxes.
Kate Holley
Class of ‘08
Darren LaCour
Op-Ed Editor
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