For many people, Wesleyan is a wonderful place to be. Wesleyan prides itself on its open-mindedness and ability to cater to a wide and diverse group of people. For the most part, whatever your ethnicity, religion, skin color, or sexual preference, you can be certain that there is an outlet here to express your individuality. There is at least one group of people however that Wesleyan seems to neglect. This school can be a very sad and scary place for aspiring writers.
If you’re looking for something competitive at Wesleyan, don’t join the rugby team. Try to get into a creative writing program. I’ve tried for three semesters to take some form of creative writing at this school, and I’m still waiting for a door to open. This past week was particularly demoralizing on that front. If you thought the lines were long to get lunch at the new campus center, check out the line to get into one of these writing classes. For the two non-submission classes that I attended (the school is only providing three this semester, and even less next) there were at least thirty extra people than were seats for. On Wednesday there was an informational meeting for a class called “The Supernatural” that would only take twelve people. At least forty showed up. Also, the people going to these classes aren’t the only kids who want to take a writing course but cannot. Undoubtedly countless others have simply not wanted to waste their time either submitting rejected samples or becoming “creative writing squatters” and waiting for someone in a class to fall out of the window, or at least discover suddenly their intense love of advanced biochemistry.
Maybe at an institute of technology, a scarcity of writing classes would be acceptable, but not here. One of the reasons people come to Wesleyan is for its reputation as a place of wild creativity. In fact, many people who live on this campus would want to describe themselves as “artsy.” By some (admittedly fuzzy) calculations, about three-and-a-half percent of the student body at Wesleyan can take a writing class this semester, but I would imagine that the number of people interested here in such a thing would be ten times as strong. Wesleyan may want to strengthen its reputation in the sciences, but forcing people into that direction should not be a desired way to do so.
Now one might say “This is what you should have expected at an elite, difficult school such as Wesleyan. Succeeding here isn’t supposed to be easy!” But the high level of ability on this campus should manifest itself in the quality of the academic work expected, not in the quantity of room there is. Understandably, there is no guarantee, nor should there be, that you can get into a class which requires submissions, but there should be enough regular writing classes that you can get into from the normal process.
This lack of space isn’t just limited to writing. I believe similar circumstances could be found in the theatre and visual arts departments. Even the new campus center doesn’t have enough room for the amount of kids who want to eat there! This just isn’t acceptable. At college one is supposed to feel like anything is possible, not be fed a “this is the real world” lack of opportunities. If I wanted to feel what it was “really like” to become a writer I could have lived on a bench in Central Park for free. But I’d prefer to stay here. So please Wesleyan, let’s make a change.
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