On Friday, Feb. 10, news broke out from St. Norbert College that Dr. Laurie M. Joyner will become their first female president, ending her career at Saint Xavier University effective July 12.
When Saint Xavier officially released the news of Dr. Joyner’s departure, I expected the campus to grow loud with people talking about the news. I expected to hear some people being upset, others joyful, some worried, but what I was met with was something else entirely: silence.
On Friday, I asked multiple people how they felt about Dr. Joyner’s departure in hopes of collecting different reactions to the situation. However, most of my responses were blank stares or nervous coughs. Charles Haltom, a classmate of mine from the class of ‘25 had this to say: “[I] didn’t know she was the president. SXU doesn’t talk much about their higher-ups.”
It was apparently a common shared sentiment: the current presidency was not very important to most students. When interviewing Paul Johnson ‘26, I asked him if he had any opinions he wanted to share about Dr. Joyner’s presidency. His response was a simple “No.”
The lack of knowledge about who leads our school was shocking to me. I began to wonder: how can people not know who their president is? But the more I thought about it, I began to realize that almost every time I’d seen Dr. Joyner, it had been at small events, not during celebrations that involved the whole school.
In fact, the only major events I had ever seen her at were Cougar Trax (our freshmen orientation), and at the Synergy Leadership Summit.
Every other interaction I had with her was through smaller meetings for student leaders. I realized that the only reason I had any sort of personal interaction with Dr. Joyner was because of my paid position on campus.
One would think that on such a small campus, students would be able to form relationships with their administration, but it seems that in Dr. Joyner’s presidency, that was not the case.
Since many students did not have much of an opinion about the current presidency, I decided to start asking people what changes they would like to see.
Lui Gallardo ‘25, another student leader, shared their thoughts with me on what they want to see for the future of Saint Xavier. “We need leaders here who are willing to help students, advocate for students, and really create a space for all students to be successful here.”
New leadership has the potential to bring drastic changes to student life on campus. I went on to ask Gallardo if they believe students should be involved in the search for a new president.
They responded by saying “… I think there should be a panel of students who the school deems as [students who] have done impressive things on campus. We need […] students who are willing to represent their own peers, and examine our new leaders[…].”
The idea of a student panel aiding in the new leadership decision could help pave the way for a new, stronger relationship between students and administration. Without proper communication between the two, we can end up back where we are now: in a school where students really do not know their president, nor do they care to get to know their president.
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