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The Setonian has been looking into details regarding Seton Hall’s Medical School. Plans for the proposed school were revealed in January, and in that initial announcement, the first class of up to 150 students was predicted to be enrolled as early as 2017. That’s now a little over a year away.
In June, an official partnership was announced between Seton Hall and Hackensack University Health Network. That was a good sign, but since then, no new information about this momentous shift in the University’s future has been released. Our efforts to find out information for the community have, for the most part, been thwarted.
The University’s silence does a disservice to students who start thinking about taking their medical school entrance exam seriously during the fall of their junior year. If a class is projected for a year from this fall in 2017, how will students even have enough information for Seton Hall to be on their radar?
The stakes couldn’t be higher for every member of the community because of the magnitude of the project. The initial announcement of the school shocked the campus because it seemed to come out of the blue. Students and faculty alike were unaware that a proposed school was even being discussed. Now we’re left wondering why the process of developing this school has been swept under the rug for so long.
Why keep information of a huge feat, New Jersey’s only Catholic medical school, from the community?
As our reporting this week reveals, a series of major players at SHU in dean’s offices, enrollment services and other departments won’t give any definitive details about this huge undertaking. Hackensack UHN has been just as silent. We’ve learned nothing about where the money for the initiative is coming from, nothing about modifications to the Hoffman-LaRoche buildings and nothing about who will run the effort if it does get underway as scheduled.
Considering our responsibility to this community, we will continue trying our best to get answers. We urge the community to get more involved in open dialogue with administrators and ask the same questions we are asking. If not, there’s no way of knowing how long we will be left in the dark about something that will have an impact on every one of us.
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