12/05/05

The first elected Treasurer of NYPIRG at SBU in 1974 was Kwok Wah Chin. Everyone just called him Chin because in those days when the campus was pretty lily white - he gave up trying to get his peers to pronounce it Guk Wah and not call him KWok. We tried to find him on the SBU Alumni Locator (*1) and did a Google search, to no avail. Chin - where are you?

NYPIRG at Stony is having it's 25th Anniversary celebration on December 7th and for those of us who were part of its original founding 30 years ago - it ranks somewhere between an insult and a joke. Somehow the second vote to have mandatory referendum funding (the University rejected the first one 4 years earlier) made NYPIRG suddenly 'founded' even though it had been doing things for 5 years. Do the recent lawsuits that made both mandatory and voluntary referendums illegal re student activity fee funding mean NYPIRG is now 'unfounded'?

(Update: After publication someone thought that 'University rejected' meant the students rejected it. Opposite. A few thousand - yes thousand! given today's low voter turnout - passed it overwhelming. Admin rejected it. The PIRG concept sweeping the state and country scared Albany.)

Prakash Mishra, whose title at NYPIRG @ SBU we forgot to ask, but he was one of the pack that started THE SB Press - its first 'Minister Without Portfolio' - scoffed at both anniversary dates. He claimed the referendum was passed under his "regime" making this the 26th Anniversary.

Does it all really matter? Yes and no. "Revisionist history", as Prakash called it, is like the famous photo of the spike being hammered in to finish the transcontinental railway. The workers who built the Western part - the toughest part through the Rockies - were Chinese. They are not in the photo at all. But the transcontinental railroad not only united the country - it made it grow from coast to coast almost overnight. Would there have been a 2nd NYPIRG referendum without the ones who did the tough part - getting the organization to even exist?  

I never really intended to write anything about this because it came across as too much of an ego thing and not Asian American related - until James Han's column came in and he criticized students for being too cliquish in joining clubs and he suggested they didn't. James meant it but it was also said tongue in cheek - he is the VP of ASA!

He is right to some degree when it means that is all you do. But it is the opposite of what I tell students. Get really involved in something - and not just as a passing participant. It will give you a 'home' within this vast university. It is what you will remember 30 years later. It is why 'revisionist' history hurts.

It will also definitely make it impossible to get a 4.0 but as alumna Sherry Ha, a former VP of ASA and marketing manager in Macy's corporate headquarters said recently, "I never went on an interview where they asked about my GPA."

While faculty like to believe that they are the most important part of the University - that is a sort of self perpetuating fallacy. To that minute number of students who go on to become faculty themselves - faculty mentors are of prime importance. But how many of us get Ph.D.'s?

For most alumni 30 years later - they can only name a handful of their professors, and as often as not, they remember the worst and the best while the mediocre middle are lost. Being a great researcher and being a great teacher are often opposites.

Thirty years after taking their classes - I remember Hugh Cleland (History), Lee Koppelman (Poli Sci), and Joseph Tanenhaus (Con Law) - they made you think and relished the process. I took Koppelman twice. He took us canoeing down the Nissequogue while EDF's lawyer lectured us. By his third semester he was so well known that instead of the 15 students his first class had been - everyone from Statesman (the only paper then), NYPIRG, ENACT, Polity (now USG), and WUSB newsies took him together. 

And Koppelman was a NYPIRG mentor as well. We sat in his office for hours while he 'pretended' to be a Suffolk County legislator as we narrowed down to 100 the questions the real legislators would be asked. As both Suffolk and Bi-County Planning Commissioner, at the time he was the most powerful unelected official on Long Island.

I have a friend who 20 years later still thinks Bill Godfrey (Latin) walks on water  - and Bill and Hugh couldn't tolerate each other. Another alumna gushes over Frank Myers (Poli Sci). The Zine's First Faculty Spotlight last month on Yuefan Deng was because he actually makes students enjoy going to a math class!   

Though actually I suppose the names of the worst aren't really remembered as much as the awful things they did. One Chair of Poli Sci whose name I don't remember was usually so wasted his classes were a trip in themselves. He ran a film backwards and sat there watching it while we sat there not knowing what to do. Would you want to be the student to tell your prof what a jerk he is?

Its not that the academic educational part of things isn't important. It is! But except for those individual faculty members who love to teach and make their students feel that -  who does the actual teaching rarely matters. If it did the University wouldn't have so many classes taught by grad students. As former ASA President Jason de la Torre wrote many years ago, those things that were most important to him in the business world he learned being a student leader. (Me too - at NYPIRG 30 years ago!)

But seriously - whether in a leadership position or not - clubs and organizations give students a bond they are not likely to find anywhere else except maybe with roommates and future spouses. Alumnus Tee Lek Ying, former Statesman Photo Editor who has been teaching at Fudan University High for the past five years, sent me a Thanksgiving email catching up on things. He would be really upset, he wrote, if it turned out Statesman and Anime Club were not doing well. 

So ignore what James Han wrote when he said don't get involved in a club or organization. Do the opposite and do it heart and soul. But don't ignore what he said about making it exclusive. That is like saying that Bio majors only need to take Bio courses and nothing else. Being well rounded should be in all aspects of life. 

I once sat next to a young woman in Staller, Joni Lippolis, who was being inducted into Phi Beta Kappa and would be going off to law school. She regretted her 4.0. 'I have nothing to look back on that I enjoyed. All I did was study and write papers. I should be feeling good today but if this is what it all means, its pretty sad.' She committed suicide at law school.

Is that an extreme case? You bet. But given that Asian American girls aged 15 to 24 have the highest rate of suicide in the country - not that extreme. The saying that this is the best four years of your life is like a stereotype - its based on a lot of truths. But you have to make it true. So enjoy. Not just a gf / bf - you'll have 50 years to be married. Not just what you'll need to get you a job - you'll have 50 years to get the gold watch at retirement and will do most of your learning in the field. Not just wasted and partying or clubbing every weekend - you won't have 50 years to do that but thank goodness! 

Learn ballroom dancing and help register students to vote and play the Asian sports of choice - badminton, basketball, and handball - and write your blog and go to the art shows and student performances and... and... and...  

"To touch the cup with eager lips and taste, not drain it... to woo and tempt and court a bliss yet not attain it... to hold the present close, not questioning the hereafter... to watch the sunset in the west, the night forgetting... to hail its advent in the east, without regretting... to have enough to share, to know the joy of giving... to thrill with all the sweets of life... is living." (*2)

by Ja Young, Chair
SB PIRG / NYPIRG at SB
1974 - 75

*¹ The SBU Alumni Locator: We don't want to make it sound like its worthless. Its fairly new and most alumni don't even know about it. But we did find the first NYPIRG at SB VP Kenny Brody on it, now an attorney in Maryland. Put yourself on it - because when all alumni are - unlike the non-existent student directory for campus - we will all be able to find each other! http://www.stonybrookalumni.com/index_flash.asp

*² There's more to it, and an author, but you don't retain everything you learn in college!