I am a first year student here at Wesleyan University. I never visited the campus before my orientation week and I decided to come to Wesleyan after I realized that the other schools I got accepted to were too “conservative” or “politically inactive.” Wesleyan is supposed to be the most politically active campus in the country, yet I don’t see as much activism as I expected. After talking to upperclassmen and workers who told stories about the amount of activism that happened at Wesleyan in the years before, I came to the realization that those days are gone and it seems that now Wesleyan is “too cool for activism.”
I tried getting involved with a few groups around campus, now mostly I just attend USLAC meetings, which have a very low turn out. I know that many organizations exist around campus and this is a small school, so of course groups are going to be small. But at the last USLAC meeting, only five students showed up, including myself, while there were six members of the dining staff and union.
The Administration has already taken away our right to chalk around our campus and tampered with the campus dining hours (which are an inconvenience to many students), and are now proposing stricter SJB rules and advocating to bring major corporations, like Taco Bell, to interfere with our dining and our dining workers.
It seems that with the quiet voice students produce around campus, the administration is taking advantage of the situation and installing many long term plans that will ruin many Wesleyan workers’ lives and the quality of life for future Wesleyan students. These long term goals won’t affect any of us any time soon, but if the Wesleyan administration continues on this road to attract a certain kind of student (and we all know which kind they are aiming for) the Wesleyan we thought we had will cease to exist.
If ever there was a time to speak out against the current administration, this is the time, before it is too late for anybody to change the future of this campus. I, as a frosh, ask for upperclassmen to step up to the plate, show some initiative and teach the Class of 2007 how to keep this campus politically active. It is imperative that we show the administration that we will not keep our mouths shut anymore! They have already taken away our right to chalk, soon they will change dining, get rid of the dining labor union (placing many hardworking individuals that have worked with Wesleyan for over a decade or more out of work), change the housing situation (making houses unavailable for current freshmen to live in by the time we are seniors), place stricter rules for students, and if we allow it, the list may go on.
So I ask the students of Wesleyan, even those who think they are too cool for activism, to start speaking out before this school becomes an institution filled with students that are complacent and apathetic.
SPEAK OUT, start chalking again, and let the administration know that we will not keep our mouths shut anymore! We are students, we have the power to change the future!
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