By Aliza Billet, Senior Arts and Culture Editor
Circling on many Yeshiva University-adjacent group chats is a WhatsApp sticker that reads, “It’s a beautiful day to be mad at Yeshiva University.” It’s a cute little way for students to express frustration — sometimes valid, sometimes not — with the university.
I hate that sticker.
Ever since I made the decision to attend YU, I’ve been on the defensive. People asked me why I was staying in the Jewish bubble instead of stepping into “the real world.” They insisted it would be just like high school, and that it was not an impressive college to attend when I could have conceivably gone somewhere “better.” But I stuck with my decision for reasons I stood strongly by: I was looking forward to being in a Jewish environment and learning with peers who had similar values to mine.
As the years passed, my defenses have gotten stronger as the list of things I loved about YU has grown. I’ve made amazing friends at this institution. I’ve joined the drama department and even starred in a play. My evolving role at the YU Observer has helped me unlock a passion for editing I hope to take into my professional life. Co-founding and running the YU Writers’ Guild since my first semester on campus has been a rewarding extracurricular activity. I feel like I’ve found and made a little community for myself here at YU, and while there are obviously some downsides— like with everything in life — it has been easy enough to sweep those under the rug and focus on the positives.
With this wonderful list on the horizon for my final semester, I was only excited to return to campus in August of this year. I even arrived a week early after making a last-minute choice to join the Cross Country team — why not take advantage of every opportunity before my time at YU bittersweetly came to an end? Go Macs!
But recent events have made it a lot harder to defend my happy little YU world.
Two days after the semester started, an email was sent out regarding a new set of criteria clubs (now strictly called “student organizations”) now needed to meet in order to be approved. This was not surprising — the email felt inevitable after the ever-unfolding events surrounding the Hareni club. In the email, criteria referred to as the “Yeshiva University Undergraduate Student Organization Visionary Framework” delineated guidelines for student organizations to follow. For example, all clubs now need to be run through communication with a “Torah Mentor” and cannot partner with outside organizations. The email also impressed the importance of student organizations aligning with specific educational goals, emphasizing new focus on leadership roles and training for student organization heads.
In the days after the email was sent out and as people began discussing it, one thing was made abundantly clear: we students are not stupid. We are analytical; we can read between the lines. The university knows this — it literally describes its students as “the visionaries and trailblazers of tomorrow.” The email read very clearly like a laundry list of ways YU wanted to keep Hareni shut down, but extended to include all clubs, so as to avoid discriminating against the LGBTQ one.
I have since spoken with various members of the administration, and apparently these changes were not specifically Hareni-targeted and were in fact written with other issues in mind. However, when the overwhelming perception among students is that the changes were sparked by the Hareni issue, perception becomes reality — unless the university explicitly says otherwise. Regardless of the intention behind the changes, the idea of more legal loopholes to keep an LGBTQ club out of YU wasn’t even my biggest problem with these new policies, though I take issue with that too.
What I cannot stand, and am honestly offended by, is the lack of integrity and — ironically — leadership displayed by the institution in the way they handled this new game plan.
First of all, the aforementioned email was sent out only to student council members and previous club leaders, meaning that the majority of students were unaware of the new club policy changes and the subsequent consequences of them. I witnessed professors encouraging freshmen to look forward to and explore the rich extracurricular club life on campus, and I had to break the news that, actually, there were no clubs up and running at the moment, and no one knew when they might be starting.
By keeping students in the dark about their own social lives and extracurricular activities, the university is living a lie. Students are left to think everything is normal, when it is not. When first-year students ask about how to get involved in clubs, they are either inadvertently lied to by upperclassmen who don’t know about the new policies, or left in the dark by those of us who received the email and simply don’t have any information to share. For an institution that claims Emet — Truth — as one of its Core Torah Values, this lack of integrity is hypocritical and embarrassing.
Secondly, the email — which appeared to be thoughtful and well put-together — contained zero practical next steps. There was no link through which to cooperate with the new guidelines, and there was no timeline regarding how to move forward with club leadership. Even now, weeks later, the university is only starting to slowly roll out information, including in a town hall the Friday before break during which it was confirmed that there is actually no date we can anticipate our clubs being approved and operating. On September 30, another email was sent out, finally providing students with the infrastructure to apply for club approval, but by the time everything will be up and running, the semester will be half over. For students like me who are graduating in December, and who have put our hearts and souls into the student organizations we hold dear, this is a massive blow that has put a significant damper on what should have been a great end to an excellent college experience.
It’s not like any of the university’s motivation for revamping student organizations is new. If it is true that these policies are not specifically because of Hareni but rather because of other clubs that have posed problems in the past, then there is no reason for the new guidelines to have been imposed only once the semester started, rather than over the summer. There is also no reason for the email to have been sent out clearly half-baked, with no practical next steps for student organization leaders to take.
I don’t want to cave to the pressure and be mad at Yeshiva University. I want to be proud that I go here. I want to stand fast in my choice to attend this institution and be able to defend that choice to those who tell me I should have gone somewhere else. I want to join the ranks of alumni I’ve met who speak fondly of the Yeshiva University they attended. But it’s difficult to be proud of an institution that claims to care about truth but doesn’t treat its students with integrity.
Instead of simply sending a WhatsApp sticker into the void as a means to vent my general frustration, I am urging the university to reassess how its actions affect students’ confidence in it. As a graduating senior who will be leaving YU with her final semester soured by these recent events, I hope for the future that the university learns to follow the values it preaches and is able to reinstill pride in the students it has left.
Photo Credit: Yeshiva University