Adelphi in the New York Times

by Jessica Lancia

On January 25, 2004, the Long Island section of the New York Times released a front-page article which paid monumental lip service to Adelphi. The first thing I thought was, "How much did we pay them to write this?" Yet, I tried to set my cynicism aside and wondered what truly bothered me about an article which applauded my university, and thus increased my own prestige since I attend it.

How accurate was that Times article?

Perhaps it was the incredibly cheesy statements, like the lead - "Students returning to class last week for the start of the spring semester at Adelphi University might get A's for their analytic skills if they described their school as thriving" - which made me suspicious. But perhaps even more alarming is the fact that the Times, which professes objectivity and usually does a very good job at it, failed to mention anything that was wrong with Adelphi. Yes, articles do usually have to have a spin, but this was more like a nauseating centrifuge.

Initially, the article comments on how numbers of enrollment, applications, and faculty members have risen. After that, the talk goes to economics, detailing Adelphi's balanced budget and increased alumni gifts. Adelphi's embarrassing history is glossed over in the middle of the article as a means to gloat over the present. Then come the student and administration interviews with nothing but positive things to say about Adelphi.

The only balancing comment is made by Debbie Cooperstein, president of the local chapter of the American Association of University Professors, who is quoted as saying, "When you have an identity crisis the size of the one we had, it takes more than a few years to set everything right."

Throughout the rest of the article, Adelphi is presented in such a bright light that any rational person reading it should feel blinded by its one-sidedness. Truth is in what is told as well as in what is omitted...and although all of the statements made about Adelphi are correct, there is much that is left out that is crucial to understanding the real condition that Adelphi is in.

After innumerable conversations, I have discovered a feeling that Adelphi students have towards the administration. Many students, including myself, feel that the administration systematically neglects keeping students informed about issues that pertain to them. An example, which stands as testimony, is the construction that has torn up the campus (and somebody please tell me where the other 73 acres of our 75 acre campus lie?!) and disrupted the lives of students and faculty alike. To the uninformed student, which most of us are, it would seem that the plumbing changes which are causing the disruptions could have been done over the summer. Students feel that Adelphi has an interest in making the campus presentable to the summer students and the visitors rather than catering to the comforts of students. Full of assumptions, we trudge through an unaesthetic and sloppy campus under construction and make potentially dangerous detours through trafficked parking lots to reach the cafeteria and don't know why.

Adelphi is under construction in a variety of other ways as well. Though enrollment may be up, we are still nowhere near the nearly 10,000 students that we flaunted in our more flowery days. Our reputation, though it may be rising, still has a ways to go before students can travel across the country, or just out of the Island, and have people actually know that Adelphi University exists, like they did in the 1960s.

Though I criticize an unbalanced article and try to rectify the situation by presenting the other side of the story, I do not want to belittle the actual tangible advances that have been made at Adelphi in a relatively short time period. Adelphi has pulled itself out of a very bad slump and thanks to a positive attitude and admirable hard work done by President Scott and the rest of the administration and faculty we have seen great improvements. Yet we must not gloat over our achievements as students, faculty, administration, and trustees without taking into perspective how much work still needs to be done. Adelphi's potential is immense; Adelphi's improvements gigantic; but the past must always be taken into account to understand the present. We have barely begun to tap into Adelphi's resources, and we must not be satisfied with a glorifying article that is written about us, but must always remember, in all aspects of our lives, to reach further and realize our full potential.