On Tuesday, October 17 an event known as Food For Thought was held for the first time by a group of Stockton Faculty and Students. While the meeting was open to the public few students chose to attend, which is unfortunate because the meeting itself and the topics it covered were quite interesting. The purpose of Food For Thought, an event which going forward will be held every other Tuesday in J 202, is to gather together students and faculty of Stockton with differing opinions and values to encourage intelligent debate and find solutions for the events occurring not just in our University but in our society as a whole (and, as the name implies, there is food present). While I may have been one of the only students in attendance at this first meeting, it really was a shame because those who did not attend missed out on a wonderful opportunity.

Some of the events we discussed at this meeting included how both students and staff felt about the diversity and inclusivity at Stockton University, what issues we found with the culture and structure of the university, and ways in which the university could potentially improve its flaws. Before this meeting, I felt that Stockton offered a fairly diverse cultural society, as it tends to host many events and discussions where different cultural viewpoints are introduced. However, the longer the discussion went on the more I realized that this was not, in fact, the case. In reality there is far less racial diversity in the Stockton student body and in the Stockton tenured staff than in many universities of comparable size, which came as a bit of a shock. 

Another issue that we discussed in detail is how disjointed the Stockton University campus truly is. While Stockton University campus offers a wide range of clubs and activities to participate in, a major difficulty for students with interests in a wide range of activities is that most of these clubs occur at the same time, with the majority occurring at 4:30 pm on Thursdays. Club leaders who were present explained how the university often made it extremely difficult to schedule club meetings outside this narrow window, and will generally resist when a club attempts to do so. While this makes sense in that they are trying to insure that clubs do not schedule events during class times so as to insure the opportunity of inclusivity for the entire student body, they are in many ways doing the exact opposite by forcing students to make decision between, say, an academic versus a cultural organization.

The last thing we discussed was probably the most important area to improve, and that was the poor organization and communication of information at this university. While sites such as OspreyHub and the weekly email convey some information they generally do not contain all of the events and clubs active around campus, and so prevents proper communication between organizations and clubs that would massively benefit from it. Everyone seemed to agree that a solution to a of these major issues would be to put all information on one single source where it can be easily found, and possibly the creation of a monthly meeting where various club members could gather to share information, thus creating a sense of university. Hopefully attendance rates will increase as time progresses.