From the YSU President’s Desk: What We Can Accomplish Together
My name is Sam Weinberg, and I’m grateful to have been elected Yeshiva Student Union (YSU) President for the 2024-2025 school year. The question of what this job entails is one that I have been grappling with and working on answering, both to myself and to the broader YU community. I believe that I can explain the job and, by extension, what I wish to accomplish with this column.
Student unions, broadly speaking, work to enhance the student experience at their institutions. That could entail working with relevant student leaders to enhance social life on campus, interacting with the administration and making sure that students' voices are heard in wider school decisions. In universities where there can be more of a discrepancy between values of the students and those of the administration, there is often potential for tensions between the union and the institution that houses them.
Part of why I ran for president on Wilf is because that latter observation is not the case here. I can’t speak for everyone, but I’m certain that a vast majority of our student body sincerely believes that the administration has our best interests in mind, and works to ensure that our academic experience is as successful as it can be — regardless of whether you define success as career-oriented or in terms of lishmah learning. This applies to the Judaic sector of the YU administration in equal measure to the secular; both in our general and in our religious studies, the administration and those who chart the course of our university are deserving of our great respect.
My responsibility as YSU president is to work constructively within that framework. Our new mission statement articulates what I understand the role of the president to be. First and foremost, I hope to be a voice for the students. My YSU team and I are here to attend to the needs of the student body at large. We hope to utilize our positions within student government to be both responsive and proactive towards the prevalent concerns and hopes.
Many of you reading this may have an image of what you would want this university to look like, or how it can fulfill the unique religious and academic goals that YU is centered around. The Five Torot, as articulated by President Berman, provides us with the ideological framework that guides our university’s mission. In my initial conversations with students, it appears that the more pressing issues relate less to grand ideas of hashkafa but to more micro concerns, like the lack of a robust social life (as reflected by the proportion of students who remain on campus for Shabbos), difficulties in communication with administrators and offices and a lack of transparency regarding some of the decision-making processes. I look forward to working with the student body and administration on these topics and more.
And now, this column. Many students believe that student government isn’t always oriented towards achieving their vision of student life. This feeling partially stems from the lack of tangible change in those aforementioned trends, but also in the reality that it's difficult to articulate the work of student government. I hope to use this column as a means to update the student body on what YSU is working on throughout the year. The student body deserves to know that their elected representatives care more about a job title or a resume line: it is incumbent upon us to keep you informed about what the student government has done and will continue to do. I look forward to using this space to accomplish that goal.
I sincerely look forward to serving in the role of YSU President. This community stands on such firm ground; we are united by our common religious values while valuing the diversity that makes each individual unique. We also know how much those individual voices can carry us further. The YU community means a tremendous amount to me, and I look forward to working with and serving you all.
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Photo Caption: YSU President, Sam Weinberg
Photo Credit: Sam Weinberg
