School hopes to gain respect
By Dave Stephens
Assistant
Campus Editor
Nearly one-quarter of all the undergraduate students
at Purdue are pursuing majors or minors in the School of Liberal Arts.
But Rachel Wehrspann, a senior in the School of
Liberal Arts, believes that students in the school still don’t
get the respect or representation they deserve. That is why she helped
start the Liberal Arts Roundtable, a roundtable made up of the presidents
of student organizations that will promote awareness of Liberal Arts
programs to the rest of campus.
"We want to bring the leaders of the different
departments together to help create a better environment for discussion,"
said Wehrspann. "It is sometimes hard for students of the different
departments within the school to communicate, since liberal arts classes
spread out across the campus."
The Liberal Arts Roundtable, which had its first
meeting on Tuesday and was formatted after the Management Roundtable,
is also a way for students in liberal arts to help foster better relations
between the different schools, said Wehrspann.
"Liberal arts students receive a lot of negative
attacks by people in other schools," said Wehrspann. "The
roundtable is a way to combat those attacks by teaching our members
to promote the positive aspects of our departments."
The roundtable is also a way for the different
organizations in the department to work together.
"There are so many small student organizations
that do so many different things; if we can come together and do things
on a bigger scale, it will help everyone involved," said Wehrspann.
One of the first goals of the roundtable will be
to promote their career fair, which has traditionally been small compared
to the career fairs of the other schools.
"We feel we can bring more employers to the
campus," said Danielle Guyer, the president of the Public Relations
Student Society of America. "Just by having all the different departments
involved in the career fair will help to make it a success."
Guyer also said that roundtable was considering
future events like an activities fair or an all school event to help
promote liberal arts.
Wehrspann hopes that the roundtable will foster
a level of understanding between liberal arts students and students
in different schools. She hopes that students who sometimes attack liberal
arts majors for having easier classes will come to understand that liberal
arts majors are a necessary part of Purdue.
"I don’t want to be an engineer, and
there are other people who would be terrible at communications,"
said Wehrspann. "If you're making fun of a liberal arts major you're
making fun of your own degree too because every major requires some
form of liberal arts classes."
Wehrspann said that she hopes the roundtable can
help the students in the department to develop pride in what they do.
"There’s no reason why you should be
ashamed of what you want to do; every major is valuable."
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