I'm still a newcomer to UMBC relative to many faculty and staff members, but my 14 years here represent a decent fraction of the entire history of the institution. One of the enormous benefits of those accumulating years is that I have had the privilege of witnessing and participating in so much change. The world can appear static in a snapshot, and a university can seem like so many bricks long-ago mortared into place. Yet UMBC's people have been making and remaking this community all along.

The turning point in establishing one long taken-for-granted feature of UMBC student life occurred ten years ago tonight, at one of the first meetings of the newly created Student Government Association Finance Board. It had been SGA's practice to allow student organizations to charge UMBC undergraduates for admission to their events, even when SGA funded the entire cost of the event. The Finance Board, which had been created to represent the interests of the entire student body, viewed that practice as double-charging students (once through the Student Activity Fee, and again at the event). So at their meeting on the night of September 25, 2007, the Finance Board established a new practice: If SGA funds an event, UMBC undergraduates have to be admitted free of charge. Although it has never been formally written into policy, that precedent has guided Finance Board decisions in all the years since.

Nearly all student organization-hosted events are now free to UMBC students, and for the current generation of undergraduates, it has always been that way: as well-established a feature of campus life as the long climb to the Walker Avenue Apartments or the scarcity of optimal parking spaces on Tuesday and Thursday mornings. Students appear more willing than their predecessors from an earlier age to take the risk of showing up at an event outside of their comfort zone: to try something new. 

So today I'm celebrating the work of a group of students from a decade past, and cheering the difference-makers--students, faculty, staff and administration--actively shaping UMBC today, both for ourselves and for the people who will walk in our footsteps.

(Photo: SGA Fall Retreat, August 2007)