News-Letter

Media Credit: Matt Hansen [Click to enlarge]

The Johns Hopkins Offices of Student Involvement and Development (OSI) should foster student leadership and community, but bureaucracy, red tape and disregard for students often hinder student ability to run a cohesive club, transforming student leadership into an administrative nightmare.

Excessive paperwork, unclear instructions and lack of assistance add significant stress to what should be an easy process -- like borrowing a van or applying for a grant. The general attitudes of several (though not all) members of the staff, meanwhile, have given many students the impression that OSI is not meant as a resource for assistance, creating an aura of inapproachability.

Our biggest qualms have been with OSI's Finance Office. As co-chairs of the 2006 Foreign Affairs Symposium, which requires significant fundraising and incurs considerable expenses, we found the task of managing our finances nearly impossible. Though we had no problems raising money, negotiating payments or keeping a budget, the Finance Office impeded our ability to do all three.Our problems began after months of fundraising, when we noticed our OSI-provided budget statement fell nearly $10,000 short of what we had raised. Early on, we assumed these inaccuracies were the result of long transaction periods, as it sometimes takes up to three months for an account deposit to register.

After setting up a meeting with the office, we found a large part of the incongruence was due to their refusal to count digital money transfers into the account, even though they had clearly occurred. Requiring paper transfers when digital transfers are so easy (and instantaneous) seems unreasonable, but not informing students of this rule, especially after a noticeable amount of money had already been transferred, is unacceptable.

OSI's inability to issue checks in a timely matter was an even greater setback. During our tenures here, we have spent considerable amounts of our own money, only to wait between three and five months to be reimbursed.

When a speaker or employee doesn't get his or her check, it creates a much more serious problem. Two of our speakers, one hired from an agency and the other a personal friend of a staff member, did not receive their checks for months after we promised they would.

Our attempts to solve these problems directly with OSI failed. First we were ignored, then given the run-around, then reassured with false promises. Our months of effort were met with excuses about delays, yet a simple e-mail complaint to a dean's office resolved the issues almost immediately.

Due to OSI's inaction, a major speaker agency won't deal with us for fear they won't be paid, and staffers don't trust us to make the payments and reimbursements we promised. Hopkins' overall reputation has been tarnished.

These issues are not isolated to FAS. We have interviewed nearly a dozen people, from different clubs, who have experienced similar issues. Many of them have since chosen to discontinue their roles as student leaders -- at least to the extent they have to deal with OSI.

OSI claims these problems are logistical, and more staff is the answer. It might be that they are understaffed, but that is no excuse for those who are there to ignore (and often intentionally avoid) students, as we have experienced on several occasions.

Earlier this year, we tried to assemble other students to meet with OSI about this problem. Though they all had their fair share of complaints, too many people were afraid to bite the hand that fed them. We don't blame them; we've wanted to write this article for over a year but instead waited until a month before we graduate.

Both of us are extremely grateful for the student leadership opportunities available at Hopkins, but we can't help but feel like OSI has not quite grasped the idea of student engagement or community. Some of the staffers are wonderful; some others are completely disconnected from student life at Hopkins. If these staffers were working in the corporate world, they would have been fired years ago.

Maybe it is up to fellow students to make some changes. The Senior Leadership Consultants (we are both members) have been seeking to address the chronic problem of student non-engagement on campus. Perhaps the Consultants should be also tackle detachment and ineptitude among some parts of the administration.

We know that OSI has already made some improvements within the past year. Moreover, it's wonderful to look around campus and see all the positive changes since we enrolled four years ago. But, upon our graduation, it is still a little bit scary to realize how much more needs to be done. We still don't have a real student union (Levering is a sorry excuse), we have not perfected campus advertising, and we don't have student groups working together as much as they should. All of these problems, we believe, are rooted in OSI.

OSI's continued problems discourage rising student leaders from remaining involved, thereby weakening student groups, lessening general student involvement, fostering apathy and ultimately stunting the institutional growth of Hopkins as a whole.

-- Marc Goldwein is a senior political science and economics major from Merion, Pa. Carey Polis is a senior Writing Seminars major from Bethesda, Md.

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