One pending request
Matt Luciano almost deleted the e-mail, thinking it would be another generic message from the university. But it turned out to be much more.
The memo announced that classes would be reinstated on SU Showcase. Not long after reading the news, an upset Luciano logged onto Facebook and started Operation Rescue MayFest.
Luciano sent out invites to seniors and others on the Syracuse network, believing that the group would just amount to a dozen people.
‘I thought if I got 10 of my friends to not click ‘ignore’ that would have been a pretty big accomplishment,’ said Luciano, a senior psychology and English and textual studies major.
After he spent 10 minutes sending out invites and writing information, the group jumped to 30 people. Twenty minutes later, it grew to 66. Over the next few hours, it grew to hundreds. As of Wednesday night, it had 5,100 members. The group has gained attention with students, faculty and administrators alike.
Luciano now feels like the leader of a revolution that he never meant to lead. ‘I didn’t intend to be this big hero,’ he said. ‘I didn’t want to be somebody who was leading a pack of rebellious college students. I just wanted the administration to hear what students had to say.’
Alex Brewer was the seventh member to join the group after seeing it on a Facebook news feed. When he joined, he sent out invitations to every one of his Syracuse friends.
‘Right after I did, my friend was like, ‘Oh, did you see that group on Facebook?” said Brewer, a sophomore communications and rhetorical studies major.
It didn’t take long for the administration to hear student voices, either. Luciano set up a discussion board for students to announce when they had sent e-mails to Vice Chancellor and Provost Eric Spina, who sent out the e-mail Friday.
Luciano, who supports separating MayFest and SU Showcase into two separate days, said the group’s main goal was to contact Spina and let him know how much MayFest meant to students. Luciano also wanted to know why classes were reinstated.
‘I just had a lot of questions that I didn’t have answers to, that the e-mail didn’t have answers to,’ he said.
Spina became aware of the Facebook campaign when students e-mailed him URL links to the group.
It was useful, Spina said, to hear from the group’s perspective, and he compared the group to an online town hall meeting where students could discuss important issues.
‘I don’t envision that we will debate university policy on Facebook,’ Spina said in an e-mail. ‘But it is one way for the leaders at SU to understand what matters to students and why.’
Luciano said it definitely says something when students are writing to the vice chancellor and getting multiple responses back.
‘There’s been a lot of stirring of students who are coming together and forming this bigger voice,’ Luciano said. ‘I think it’s going to be hard for the administration not to hear us.’
There was a lot of accessibility for students to voice their opinions by using the Facebook group, Luciano said. Having a computer screen separating the group’s members wasn’t a bad thing, Luciano added.
‘People can speak their minds more freely,’ Luciano said. ‘They can feel like they’re making a difference…in the comfort of their own home.’
Students are just as engaged as ever in voicing their opinions, just in different ways than they used to, said Thomas Wolfe, senior vice president and dean of student affairs.
‘We can’t use standards of protest from other eras in this contemporary one,’ said Wolfe, who is meeting with Student Association members on Friday to discuss the SU Showcase issue.
Wolfe also has a Facebook and checks the Operation Rescue MayFest page. Students seemed interested in having celebrations apart from SU Showcase, he said, but others were happy with the newly formatted event.
The group has caught attention from university faculty as well. On Wednesday, Luciano received an e-mail from a professor, who said he wanted to help out with the effort in any way that he could.
Luciano has presented projects at SU Showcase for three years, and some students are afraid they won’t have time to present their SU Showcase project if classes are held.
‘I think a lot of people are in it for the party on Euclid, but there are people that do care about the academics too,’ Luciano said ‘And I think I’m a part of both of those camps.’
Students have joined other Facebook groups about the SU Showcase issue, too. On one of these groups, about 550 students said they would attend the SA meeting Monday to debate the MayFest issue. But only about 30 showed up.
More students would come out if the administration met with them personally, Luciano said.
However, he said the proposed Euclid Avenue block party Friday would deter the administration from wanting to work with students. The protest was proposed by SA presidential candidate Hari Iyer.
‘I don’t not like open protest,’ Luciano said. ‘But there’s a natural progression into it, and I don’t think it’s something you can do right out the door.’
Yet as the numbers continue to grow on Operation Rescuse MayFest’s page, Luciano emphasized that the administration should make decisions that are best for the student body.
‘They definitely think that this is what’s best for us,’ Luciano said. ‘But I think there’s enough people now that we can safely say that it’s not.’
Published on October 28, 2009 at 12:00 pm
