We arrived at Wesleyan four years ago in the middle of a hurricane, moving in through pouring rain—a messy, surreal welcome, but nothing compared to what came that move-in night.
At 2 a.m., first-year students living in the Butterfields dorms were jolted awake by blaring fire alarms, forcing us to evacuate into the storm. Half-asleep, I asked if I could take anything. An RA shook her head.
“No time, just grab one pillow,” she told me.
So I did, clutching it like a life preserver as we trudged through the rain to our first campus home: the stiff, rubberized floor of the Freeman Athletic Center.
This was definitely not on the campus tour.
It feels like a fitting capstone to tell this story now, in the last issue of this semester’s Argus. If you were in Freeman that night, you remember it: hot, loud, and deeply uncomfortable. Roaring generators, unforgiving fluorescent lights, no mats, no blankets—just the cold, hard track.
Wide awake in that giant, sweaty gym, hugging my pillow, I started questioning my life choices. Looking back, though, it was the perfect way to start. Because if our class has proven anything over the last four years, it’s that we know how to weather a storm.
We didn’t know it then, but that first night’s fire alarm foreshadowed years of blaring warnings: disruptions, wake-ups, and lessons in resilience.
We started college in 2021 in a world filled with unrest. We witnessed an ex-president who wouldn’t admit he lost; we tested for COVID twice a week, swabbing our noses so often that it became second nature; and we saw rights stripped away as Roe v. Wade fell, forcing us to fight battles we thought were already won.
New challenges arose each semester. Politics and war tore campuses and families apart. We went through calls for Biden to drop out, Kamala making history, a presidential election, and an exhausting transition of power. And we witnessed the world literally burning—fires in LA, hurricanes in North Carolina, environmental disasters that made our first night hurricane seem like a warm-up. Through it all, we had papers to write, exams to cram for, deadlines that didn’t care about democracy or disaster, and somehow, a future to prepare for. Despite everything, we kept going.
We had setbacks but also found victories. Many were on that very track where we spent our first night. We cheered as our basketball and football teams won championships, as classmates broke records and brought home titles, as we elected the school’s first blind student body president. Rallies and an encampment rose as students fought for justice. We pulled all-nighters studying and marched in protests the next day—voices hoarse but unwavering.
The pandemic tore things down, but we rebuilt—not just clubs and collectives, but the spirit of our community. We upheld traditions and started our own—recovered what was lost and reinvented what could be. We filled the campus with art, music, and ideas, and, through it all, we proved that the heart of Wesleyan is not the past, but the future we envision. And now, we’ve made it to the finish line.
And guess what? Just as we are about to step out on our own, the alarms are sounding once again.
Science, journalism, academic freedom, the rule of law, and democracy itself are all under attack in a world turned upside down, a nation torn by political storm. The moral arc of the universe demands we once again wake up, once again step up. Act. Fight. Use everything we’ve learned—not just in classrooms, but from the chaos, the disasters, the long nights, the moments we thought we wouldn’t make it, and the camaraderie and fellowship that got us through—and do something.
If there’s one thing our class knows how to do, it’s how to act when the alarms go off. We don’t freeze. We don’t ignore them. We get up, we grab what we can, and we go.
Like that first night, we might not know exactly where we’re headed. We might end up somewhere hard and unexpected. But we’ll figure it out—together. We’ve proven we can deal with a fire, we’ve shown we can handle a crisis, and if we have to walk through a storm? Well, we’ve done it before. Whatever comes next, we’re ready for it.
Ben Shifrel is a member of the class of 2025 and can be reached at bshifrel@wesleyan.edu.
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