Administration seems to think students are lazy, apathetic stoners. And what Leah Begin said to me in an article last year seems to sum up many students’ opinion of administrators. Begin, then a sophomore, said, “Students, by and large, see the Guilford administration as a churning monster, uncontrollably chewing up what this school has worked so hard to become and barfing out fancy schmancy new buildings.”
Both sides have misconceptions about each other. There’s a lack of transparency here. Neither administrators nor students feel they can fully trust the other group’s motives and actions.
In the past week Campus Life sponsored two forums to discuss proposed policy changes concerning alcohol, drugs, smoking, judicial process, and the honor code. Senior Emily Place attended last Friday’s forum and said few people showed. I fear that administration will assume student apathy.
Students are not apathetic. Sure, some are. But plenty aren’t.
Simpson wanted to attend last Friday’s forum “because these issues are so pertinent” but couldn’t because she had a pressing paper. She said Campus Life showed “unfortunate insensitivity” to such a “classically hectic time in students’ lives”.
Simpson said, “Maybe Campus Life can hold another forum next semester once it’s made clear that these two forums are problematic.”
Administration isn’t a gaggle of ogres. They’re human beings. Students can’t forget the Quaker principle that truth can come from unexpected sources, even administrators. I hope administration also remains open to truth that students and others may express.
At a May 2005 forum I heard an elderly alum say that in his time the woods were valuable to students and he figures they still are. And last semester, with president of the college Kent Chabotar present, I sat in Bryan Jr. Auditorium with a copy of a Master Plan draft in my hand and emphasized the importance of the Plan’s prioritizing of the “maintenance and preservation” of the woods.
Look at the woods now. Three landmarks destroyed. Trees here and there knocked down by machines the school used to drive out to the heart of our woods and demolish the shed, the cage, and the climbing wall. As if the school assumes all any of us ever do out there is smoke pot and act a fool.
For me, the Guilford woods are my spiritual haven. And near the shed many times I’ve had conversations that are the very stuff of the college experience, vital conversations that deepen bonds, explore intellectual territory, and trigger personal growth.
“I’ve never smoked pot in my life,” said junior Sarah Adkisson, “and I visited those places all the time. I did some of my best writing and homework on the wall’s platform.”
Josh Brown, a Guilford student from 1999-2003, says it well.
“This represents a huge departure from the respect for nature and appreciation for history that we expect from Guilford,” Brown said. “Structures from the old ropes course could’ve been used again and had become a canvas for some truly free-spirited art by students. And students have stories of sitting atop of the climbing wall for hours reading a book or having a philosophical discussion.”
The loss of these structures is a loss of part of our community history. Maybe our history doesn’t bind us to any future path. But it did get us where are today. And we can’t forget that.
As Peter Gott, now a first-year CCE student, said to me in an interview last year, “If you’re not aware of where you’ve been, you won’t end up where you had been heading.”
We must know where we’ve been and decide from there what we can safely toss aside and what we must cling to even in those compromises we do make. Otherwise we’ll toss away the things we should cling to. Let’s figure out if we haven’t gone and done just that.
Begin said last year that she most fears “irrecoverable change”.
And I believe change most irrecoverable when it goes unaddressed.
Students, let’s be gadflies. Plenty of us aren’t apathetic but our energy comes in waves. We’d do well to sustain our activity and to formulate a united message.
Administration, please, listen. You trumpet community and equality as core values. And I hope you mean something by your trumpeting.
Let’s have a community, Guilford. And let’s care enough to establish the communication, trust, and respect that could make it work.