2008 Woodie Awards
Rant and Roll: On Open Letter To President Chopp
Katherine K. Eberly ‘06
Issue date: 4/22/05 Section: Commentary
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Dear President Chopp,
Let us adopt military jargon for the moment - because currently, this is a war. And right now, every student is a soldier "in the field." We see what's going on. We may not know every name of every face that passes by us in the Quad but we share a lot in common (even if you do want to separate us into houses based on our race or sexuality). President Chopp, it has been a long time for you, but please remember back to when you were a student. There was the boy whose parents were going through a nasty divorce. The girl who lost her childhood best friend in a car accident. The young man of the Economics department who truly wanted to be a music major, but he feared society wouldn't view it as "acceptable." The girl who felt she was never thin enough, smart enough, or rich enough and reminded herself of this every free moment she had. The small town boy at the new big school. The city girl who got bored.
A college is a place where you can walk into a party of 100 people and feel lonely. A place where you feel that if you fall behind one day, you can never catch up. A place where when you get a C+ on a research paper, it's guaranteed the girl sitting next to you got an A. Adults in the real world are concerned with "keeping up with the Joneses," but in college, we're concerned with keeping up with the Kates in Pysch 150 and the Peters in the dorm. We want to please our parents, our friends, our lovers, our enemies, our professors and, sometimes the hardest, ourselves. We experience high highs and low lows and rarely have time to savor the in betweens.
This is what causes binge drinking, aggression, sexual assault, closed mindedness and all the other attitudes, behaviors and actions your administration is trying to eradicate. I want to sue the Colgate administration for negligence, because by pointing the finger at the Greek system, you are choosing to overlook the real causes of these problems and choosing not to actually do anything positive to change this university. Binge-drinking, violence, sexual assault - these are serious problems that need to be evaluated and changed, and that will not happen by making them the beard for your vendetta against the Greek system. Owning the Greek houses will only pave the way for one thing, and one thing only: the eventual eradication of the Greek life at Colgate. What's left? At least you'll offer "workshops on public speaking, conflict resolution, teamwork, active listening, decision-making, leadership and strategic planning, and help students develop and sharpen community building skills" (from "A Vision of Residential Education"). Making these broad (pun intended) plans that do not target specific issues will not produce positive changes. These programs are designed to look good in a prospective college catalogue, not actually function efficiently on a living, working campus - which makes me wonder if all of this is for us, the students, or to justify our "liberalness" in the race to top the U.S. News rankings.
Let us adopt military jargon for the moment - because currently, this is a war. And right now, every student is a soldier "in the field." We see what's going on. We may not know every name of every face that passes by us in the Quad but we share a lot in common (even if you do want to separate us into houses based on our race or sexuality). President Chopp, it has been a long time for you, but please remember back to when you were a student. There was the boy whose parents were going through a nasty divorce. The girl who lost her childhood best friend in a car accident. The young man of the Economics department who truly wanted to be a music major, but he feared society wouldn't view it as "acceptable." The girl who felt she was never thin enough, smart enough, or rich enough and reminded herself of this every free moment she had. The small town boy at the new big school. The city girl who got bored.
A college is a place where you can walk into a party of 100 people and feel lonely. A place where you feel that if you fall behind one day, you can never catch up. A place where when you get a C+ on a research paper, it's guaranteed the girl sitting next to you got an A. Adults in the real world are concerned with "keeping up with the Joneses," but in college, we're concerned with keeping up with the Kates in Pysch 150 and the Peters in the dorm. We want to please our parents, our friends, our lovers, our enemies, our professors and, sometimes the hardest, ourselves. We experience high highs and low lows and rarely have time to savor the in betweens.
This is what causes binge drinking, aggression, sexual assault, closed mindedness and all the other attitudes, behaviors and actions your administration is trying to eradicate. I want to sue the Colgate administration for negligence, because by pointing the finger at the Greek system, you are choosing to overlook the real causes of these problems and choosing not to actually do anything positive to change this university. Binge-drinking, violence, sexual assault - these are serious problems that need to be evaluated and changed, and that will not happen by making them the beard for your vendetta against the Greek system. Owning the Greek houses will only pave the way for one thing, and one thing only: the eventual eradication of the Greek life at Colgate. What's left? At least you'll offer "workshops on public speaking, conflict resolution, teamwork, active listening, decision-making, leadership and strategic planning, and help students develop and sharpen community building skills" (from "A Vision of Residential Education"). Making these broad (pun intended) plans that do not target specific issues will not produce positive changes. These programs are designed to look good in a prospective college catalogue, not actually function efficiently on a living, working campus - which makes me wonder if all of this is for us, the students, or to justify our "liberalness" in the race to top the U.S. News rankings.