Part the waters, Moses.The Freed Slaves of Guilford’s Pharaoh are dropping this place like a bad habit and show no signs of stopping.

Too many first-years I know aren’t satisfied with Guilford. Complaints are vague, but all attest to a certain overwhelming lethargy of the campus and themselves.

Number-crunching trustees are baffled by low student morale; I suggest they acknowledge obvious surface complaints – cafeteria quality, on-campus recreation, the continued watering-down of the main campus education. Then they should look at certain students themselves.

Time out: not everyone hates it here, and most don’t even fit the now-standard Guilford slacker profile. There are people here who searched thoroughly for colleges, found Guilford a suitable place to study, and study they do. They get their money’s worth.

So I hope it isn’t too categorically when I say that Guilford is not a good learning environment for many of its smartest students, especially those most likely to drop out.

This place is too loose for us. So loose, it feels like it’s falling apart.

Alice Sharp, in her Op/Ed “Young, dumb, and out of control,” (Feb 1.) hit the nail on the neck when she mourned the loss of so many bright heads, slipping through because they “just weren’t ready.” But it goes deeper than that.

“I’m looking forward to college,” first-year Andrew Kobayashi said two days into school last fall. “It’s the only part of your life dedicated entirely to filling your noggin.”

But something about this school fails to inspire such brilliant students as Andrew – and no one who knows him would call him anything but brilliant – to any incessant noggin-filling.

Andrew, and a plagued slew of others like him, came with the hope of repenting their high school sins of low academic work; they will leave as Guilford’s fallen angels, too set in inadequate work ethics and not properly challenged to succeed here.

GuilCor does a swell job at pitching itself as a pinnacle of liberal, fostering education, but scores of students are leaving unfostered. Whom does the school admit?

To start with, students like me, who abhorred high school and whose grades reflect it. We got in by showy essays, radiant recommendations, and impressive SAT/ACT scores.

But once here, the cycle of slack starts anew. Any dreams of social and educational fulfillment are shattered. The college doesn’t know what to do with us, and we came here expressly because we didn’t know what to do with ourselves.

What does the school expect when it admits students who have a 34 ACT verbal but who placed in the bottom 90 percent of their graduating class by GPA?

It expects, I assume, the high tuition to compel us to work; the ennobling daunt of collegial vehemence; the assumed necessity of a college diploma.

Guess what, Guilford: it’s not happening.

The pervasive apathy of many main campus students regarding school work and learning can infect a productive student’s psyche. When no one’s committed and we’ve got too much time on our hands, what’s to keep us on course with classes and off pot and beer?

The administrators say Guilford’s in a rut. For us, it is the rut.

Look at the ones dropping out. They’re not all dumb. They’re doing dumb things because they know no alternative.

And yet they came to Guilford to find that alternative.

Ivory-towered trustees and deans have to realize that a plurality of Guilford’s smartest students – who lead their peers at school and out of it – arrive to a pathetic mentor program, miserable low-level credit requirements, and near non-existent campus life.

Some have never done much work before, and with nothing better in place to carry them from adolescent under-achievers to adults with a drive to learn, they’re going to continue the exodus.

For all its impressive posturing at college fairs, for all its glossy mail-outs touting tolerance and a nurturing environment, the school cannot explain where all those fresh faces went.

For too many of us here, staying at Guilford means sitting and rotting.

We’re not doing our school or our teachers any good. Imagine what we’re doing to ourselves.