LAST TUESDAY, as I sat at a table with members of the faculty and fellow second years listening to Charles McCurdy, chair of the History Department, explain the similarities between Babe Ruth and Chief Justice John Marshall, I came to a profound conclusion: this is wonderful.
It was the fourth out of five in the Second Year Dinner Series, specifically set up by the Second Year Council in order to give students and faculty the opportunity to interact.
Somewhere between the scintillating conversation I had with History Prof. Brian Balogh on single issue elections and the fresh discussion of poetry with English Prof. Jahan Ramazani, editor of my Norton Anthology of Modern and Contemporary Poetry books, I realized the importance of student-faculty congregations.
Because our experience at the University should not be limited to Cabell Hall and Rugby Road, it is essential that all class councils work particularly hard in providing students with the opportunity to converse with otherwise intimidating members of our distinguished faculty.
First of all, due credit should be given to the standing class councils. The Second Year Council has obviously recognized the importance of such events by establishing the Dinner Series, five opportunities for students and faculty to enjoy a better-than-Newcomb dining experience together; the final one is on March 15.
Fourth Year Council deserves similar credit in helping with the creation of a Casino Night, as well as a Dinner with President Casteen (Mar. 29, where students and faculty will get a similar chance to dine together) and the Annual Student-Faculty Benefit Banquet on May 20, where students and families have the opportunity to sit with faculty members of their choice. When I told my friends from home that I was on my way to a dinner with professors they didn't believe me, but thanks to the class councils I wasn't lying.
The importance of these events to a successful college education cannot be overstated. Sadly enough, many college students nationwide merely go through the motions -- take their 120 credits, drink copious amounts of alcohol and call it a college experience as they throw their goofy hats into the air.
College, while including some or all of the mentioned activities, should not be restricted to just that; after all, it is called a college experience for a reason.
The experiences we gain are not only in the tests we take, the readings we do, the weekends we remember (or don't); it is about what meaning we can ascertain from the undertaking and culmination of all these activities and more.
Finding such meaning is a deceptively difficult task, and it was at the third night of the Dinner Series when Dean Nicole Hurd delivered an inspiring speech encouraging students to take advantage of the many opportunities available that I realized how important faculty are to our education outside of the classroom.
Pillars of experience and bastions of knowledge, the members of our faculty are indeed the most underrated and perhaps even underutilized people in our lives. As students, we are inherently supersaturated with questions ranging from the topic of life to the peculiarities of graduate school, and it's almost too easy to forget that our faculty have leads if not answers to our questions, and are happy to share them with us.
So when I sat at the fourth dinner with our faculty and my classmates, I had more than a dinner: I had a revelation, one that can be told as follows. Most likely, Mr. Jefferson could never have fathomed the growth of his University into what it is today. Nonetheless, through the creation of his original academic village, where students and professors lived together in the same community, Mr. Jefferson clearly understood what we should understand now.
While the computers, libraries and classes are wonderful and not to be taken for granted, they are still secondary in importance to the interaction between students and faculty not only within the classroom but outside. With student elections coming this week, future leaders should be intent on maximizing student-faculty events and students should make a point to attend these opportunities.
Sina Kian's column appears Thursdays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at skian@cavalierdaily.com.
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