About 35 Wesleyan students from the class of ’11 will grace the pages of the New York Times Magazine this Sunday and, we’re hoping, will begin to bridge the gap between the image of the University that the national media perceives and that which the administration itself asserts.
The University’s home page features headlines on students’ academic achievements—particularly in the sciences—and faculty members’ scholarly endeavors. In recent news: “Cutler on UAW-GM Contract Negotiations;” “Zilkha Gift Creates Chair in College of Social Studies;” “Student Uses Fellowship to Study Rare Cancer.” As students, we embrace investment in the sciences and traditional liberal arts academics. What we do not embrace is this investment at the exclusion of Wesleyan’s other attributes.
The Times’ actual reasons for choosing Wes (namely, geographic and student diversity) aside, a colorful fashion shoot will fall in line with—as well as raise the bar for—such recent media attention as Gawker.com dubbing ours the Most Annoying Liberal Arts School and music website Stereogum.com featuring the tune “Party on Fountain” by campus improv comedy group New Teen Force. In a word, Wesleyan harbors a culture alternative to the classic American college of academics, athletics, and societies. We are an intellectual and scholarly student body; we are athletes and nerds and Greeks. But we’re simultaneously artistic, creative and interesting.
To harness this left-of-center image of campus life, we think, could only help the University in its outreach to prospective students—if we have to speak in terms of publicity and profit. At the least, it would avoid presenting to high school seniors a school intellectually and socially in the same vein as Amherst or Williams. At the most, it would present a more vibrant and—more importantly—more honest portrayal of Wesleyan.
Last year, for example, student group Students for Ending the War in Iraq organized a demonstration in New Haven that was covered by both the New Haven Advocate and the New Haven Register. However, against the group’s request, the University did not post either article in the “Headlines” section of its homepage, citing a policy to not endorse specific political stances, as well as one to promote primarily academic strength. While one may argue in favor of the first policy, it is difficult to imagine a higher education university that promotes values such as effective citizenship and social justice refusing to broadcast, let alone praise, students for reacting articulately and effectively in response to a national issue.
If our eye-catching student culture has made it on the radar of the Times, it shouldn’t be excluded from the radar of the University itself.
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