Dear Editor,

I’ve been thinking a lot about community lately, one of Guilford’s so-called “core values.” I’ve wondered if community is, indeed, the squishiest of those values, the one we have the most trouble actually defining. It needs to be something more than the Kumbayah feeling of campfire camaraderie; it needs to be more than people living, studying, and working in the same location. It also needs to be less than anybody and everyone.

Perhaps the blurriness comes from an unwillingness to state openly and clearly what doesn’t belong in our community. But community only works when founded upon a clear articulation of how we are—or can be—alike. It requires a commitment to ideas cherished in common, goals to be gained through common focus and struggle, and sensibilities shared and developed in harmony.

I realize it’s unpopular nowadays to draw boundaries, to say who’s in and who’s out. It’s all too easy to let such categorization drift over into exclusivity, privilege, and the exercise of power. But in building and maintaining a small, liberal arts and sciences college community, it’s more honest in the long run to be open and genuine about who will fit in and who won’t. And I think that’s especially true at times when you are tempted, by financial or other circumstances, to park your principles in the remote lot.

So I’m going to take the hazardous step of naming certain sensibilities and proclivities that don’t belong at Guilford College. At best, this may be counterintuitive; at worst, I’ll offend people. But at the very least, this list might make us think a little harder about what community at Guilford means.

You don’t belong at Guilford if:

1. You aren’t intellectually curious—We’re a college, and the whole reason for being a college is to explore ideas, discover knowledge, question assumptions, and learn about things you never knew existed. Especially because Guilford is a college founded on Quaker principles, we believe that truth is continually being revealed; it’s not something that was dug up, once and for all, at some point in the past. If you’re not ready to meet each day here as an opportunity to uncover something fascinating, then you’re in the wrong place. Science may not be your great strength, but intellectually curious people marvel at its ability to unwrap mysteries. You may not like writing papers, but intellectually curious people respect the magic of what occurs when words get stuck to a page and then loosen themselves to fly at other things. At Guilford, learning explodes every day.

2. You aren’t liberally-minded—I don’t mean that you have to be a liberal, in the limited political sense of that word, to attend or work at Guilford. We have a range of political ideas here. But if you aren’t willing to be liberated from old habits and old ideas, you don’t need to be here. If you aren’t willing to have your mind broadened through studying the liberal arts and sciences—by which I mean any and all subjects that work to expand your thinking and do not prepare you only to do very particular, technical things—if you only want to stay in a small, secure corner of your mind box, you’re wasting your time at Guilford. Guilford exists to turn your mind box inside out.

3. You aren’t interested in being radical—I know what you’re thinking: there he goes with that left-wing political thing again. No, that’s not at all what I mean. I’m talking about “radical” in its more fundamental sense: from the Latin radicalis, relating to or forming the root, fundamental, original, primary. At Guilford, we’re passionate about digging down, looking for causes, for the start of things. We’re also radically into originality; we want to know what you think, what connections you draw, what you have to say, what you want to build. We want you to discover your root passion, the thing that makes you who you are and keeps you moving and striving even when it seems there’s no more fuel left. Not caring, not being passionate about something important, is uncool here.

4. You’re only here for the money—Many who work at Guilford, and are paid well below the average market rate, would say that someone who comes to Guilford for the money is crazy. That’s not why we’re here. A lot of students say they came to Guilford because they got the best financial deal. If that got you here, that’s fine. But that’s not a good reason to stay. The money won’t make you light up in class when a new idea forms; it won’t help you dig your way toward that essential source for your research; it won’t make you care more about the opportunity to study ornithology on the Outer Banks or Tibetan culture in southwest China. You need to be smart, of course, about your financial situation, but the money won’t buy you love.

5. You only want to play—If your primary reason for coming to Guilford was just to have fun or to play ball, you made the wrong choice. Guilford is a serious place for serious people—who know how to laugh when it’s appropriate. But if you only want to have fun in any of the hundreds of negative ways college allows for, you won’t last. You’ll burn out or get kicked out. Playing a sport is clearly important; a lot of us at Guilford do just that. But if that’s your only reason for being here, you’re bound to become disappointed. What if you get hurt? What if you aren’t good enough to make the team? All our coaches will tell you that your academic program is the most important thing. It builds the skills you’ll use for the rest of your life, not the ones you’ll only exercise for a few more years.

6. You think it’s okay to demean other people—Part of being a community means that you treat all others with care and respect. We don’t tolerate anything less. We know that we can be Islamaphobic or racist or sexist, but we are working not to be. If you aren’t willing to struggle against your assumptions, your prejudices, your untested thoughts about other people, you don’t belong at Guilford. We don’t expect you to be perfect, just willing to question what you think. At Guilford, respect is always the first motion.

7. You aren’t striving to be honest with yourself and others—The Quaker testimony of integrity underlies everything we do at Guilford, from academic honesty to our system of restorative justice when students break the Student Code of Conduct. Lying and cheating, being false to yourself and others, in your academic work and your interpersonal interactions, are not tolerated here, so if you don’t want to be honest and look at things honestly, you’re better off somewhere else. The beauty of community blooms through trust. Honesty in all things is Guilford’s way of life.

8. You think the world is just and fine as it is—Chances are, if you think our planet and its human and non-human inhabitants are not groaning in travail, you’ve led a very sheltered existence, privileged by your status as a human being or the benefits of wealth that screen from sight the hunger, poverty, species extinction, and environmental degradation that plague nearly every node on this globe. If you think things are always fair and just in this world of ours, it’s likely you started with a bigger share than you realize. Our core value of equality at Guilford pushes us to interrogate, from multiple perspectives, the ways in which the weak suffer at the hands of the strong, the innocent face discrimination from the powerful, and the inarticulate remain hostage to those who lack the conscience to see the error of their unjust ways. At Guilford, we work to make the (human and non-human) world a better place.

There you have it: some ways of thinking and acting that don’t belong at Guilford College. You might notice that the ideas here leave lots of room for plenty of people willing to be challenged and grow intellectually and ethically. It’s a pretty big tent. You’re welcome to step in.

Sincerely,

Jim Hood

Professor of English