Get Off the ACB and Say It To Their Face

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February 6, 2009

Tuesday’s SDS-sponsored forum dealt with a subject that should concern all students. Surely, there is a wide variety of opinion about what our campus’s relationship is with Middletown. And yet the only students who showed up were those convinced that Wesleyan needs to make more of its resources available to its neighbors. The advertised purpose of the event was to initiate a dialogue between students, but it failed, because only one viewpoint was represented.

The state of discourse on this campus is a serious problem. Whenever we disagree in a serious way, we condemn each other in anonymous comments on Wesleying or the ACB, or in grandiloquent Wespeaks that are intended to irritate rather than instigate. While this trend is unproductive and embarrassing when people are arguing about the Israel-Palestine conflict or Barack Obama’s economic stimulus package—issues we are unlikely to have much an impact on—it is downright disastrous when it results in students failing to discuss campus issues. While SDS plans to proceed with a campaign to make the campus more open, it will now do so with little input from more moderate potential allies. SDS made a good faith effort to hear outside opinion, but few wanted to talk.

Of course, activists themselves often fail to engage in honest open discourse. The students who pushed for divestment, or to replace the Bank of America ATM, failed at least in part because they neglected to effectively and calmly make their case to the student body, and thus never recruited more than a small cadre of supporters.

There are a host of serious problems facing students right now. How do you feel about the new exam schedule? How do you feel about the increase in the size of the student body? Do you think enough was done in response to Fountain? If we do not discuss these issues, we cannot hope to see them resolved satisfactorily. Our fear of public argument is paralyzing our ability to act. We may find that it is worth disagreeing with our peers face-to-face if it allows students to have a voice.

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2 responses to “Get Off the ACB and Say It To Their Face”

February 7, 2009

Mark Procter

[I don’t know if I honestly believe what I’m writing; I do believe that it has a minimal amount of logic. I would love to be /persuaded/ there are viewpoints more right or less wrong than this one.]

Sharing resources is a great thing, it’s kind of why civilization is where it is today (and really, it is good; don’t complain, unless you’re in that 0.001% of the readership who still hunts game with a bow and digs roots.)
However, equal exchange is also a very good thing.

I find it difficult to propose an exchange of concrete campus resources for intangible enrichment and a sense of social well-being.

Using some /very/ rough figures, the city of Middletown has a budget of under $200 mil for around 40,000 people. Wesleyan collects over $100 mil just from “tuition and fees”, which it uses for… 4,000 people, at the most? When one group has five times as much as another… guess who gets to decide what happens?

There is a disparity here. But, IF there is a responsibility to make amends for this disparity… is there a way to address it that doesn’t ultimate put the burden on students? Funds and physical resources are limited (see; forced triples, lunch on the floor in Usdan). Providing broader access to University resources without influencing student experience of those same resources.

Hold it though, interaction with Middletown residents should /improve/ the student experience, right? Maybe yes, Maybe no. I don’t know. We are adjacent to what I believe is a low-income housing development. I think there is a reasonable contingent of students who would prefer that campus libraries, galleries, and perhaps other spaces stay closed to toddlers and persons indistinguishable (be it from insensitivity or lack of differentiating characteristics) from those who have committed violent crimes, with Wesleyan Students as the victims, on and near campus.

At this point in time, the benefits of Middletown that I can name easily are 1) restaurants and food 2) banks 3) Rite-Aid and other stores. These are not unique resources to the City of Middletown.Yes. Yes, there are cultural opportunities, and other options for enrichment. Yes.

I probably fall at the lower end of the curve in my sense of social Justice, but here’s my thesis, again: I find it difficult to propose an exchange of concrete campus resources for intangible enrichment and a sense of social well-being, especially when losing about a tenth of our endowment is considered outperforming the market.

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February 16, 2009

Anonymous

tl;dr

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Get Off the ACB and Say It To Their Face

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