a conversation about yourself.
That was the feeling I had last semester when I attended a dinner for university alumni and friends in town for the Baptist State Convention. After the dinner, Provost David Brown made a few remarks.
Framing his talk as a summary of the university's current projects, Brown prefaced it with a joke or two.
"This year we raised our tuition by $3,000, and our number of applications is at an all-time high. Maybe we should try that out here at this church, to get membership rates up."
Laughter rippled through the mostly wealthy, middle-aged audience as Brown began telling them about the Plan for the Class of 2000. I looked around at the other students at my table. None were exactly rolling in the aisles.
Our dismay grew to disgust as we heard about the plans for the Divinity School, the ThinkPads and how Brown hoped they would foster not only a better academic atmosphere, but an improved social and moral consciousness. (Now which administration inadvertently sold institutional-use software to students last semester?)
Much as it disturbs me to say it, it seems like jokes about the tuition increase aren't atypical of the administration these days. And coming from the man quoted in the April 28, 1994 issue of the Old Gold and Black as saying, "It is a conviction of mine that tuition is lower than it should be," my sense of surprise, if not my sense of horror, at what he says is gone.
Earlier this year, a trustee of the university told me that the administration really does have students' interests at heart, no matter how misguided its actions. With a few exceptions, such as the initial Program Planning Committee report two years ago which advocated increasing class sizes and hiring more non tenure-track faculty, I was willing to try and believe this.
In the months since that conversation, I'm no longer so confident that the administration is interested in its current students at all. As the university tries to improve itself at a greater and greater rate, students' voices in the matter have faded to a whisper.
What professor or student, aside from junior Tina Schippers, student government secretary, perhaps, really wants to build a coffeehouse so far from the center of campus that nobody will make the hike out to use it? As a biology major, I have noticed that many of my professors seldom have time to walk as far as the post office, much less the remote edge of campus.
How many students genuinely feel the need, or desire, for gates around campus? Perhaps improving the lighting between the library and Winston Hall and installing emergency phones somewhere other than the Worrell Professional Center parking lot would be a better use of the money.
Already an island in Winston-Salem, already walled off in every sense except the physical, should the university really alienate itself further from the community?
And, for that matter, who asked to have the patch of grass between Benson University Center and Davis House covered in concrete and flagpoles? Let's fix the patio in front of Tribble Hall that turns into a knee-deep mud puddle whenever it rains instead.
I won't even start on the ThinkPads -- that's a column by itself -- and that bugbear of last semester, the Lilly Report, but it's clear that the list goes on. Is it really a surprise that a malcontent group of students known as "Pave the Quad" has gained widespread recognition on campus?
For those of us who are students here -- not the unprecedented number applying to the school, not the ThinkPad-toting Class of 2000, but those of us here now -- I think the feeling of being left behind by the administration's urge to improve everything immediately, without reflection or introspection, is overwhelming.
The cataclysmic changes taking place now will either be the best thing the university has done since moving to Winston-Salem, or they will be an unimaginably expensive, spectacular disaster.
But the fact that an institution purporting to offer an excellent liberal arts education (which, so far, I believe the university often does) would take such a dramatic gamble with its students (and their tuition money) is shockingly irresponsible.
I wonder also what the changes will do to the students here. With projects such as freshmen seminars and Shorty's, it appears that the administration is trying to foster an intellectual atmosphere on campus, far beyond that which exists now. But face it: the students who come to the university today are, on the whole, not coming here for a refined intellectual atmosphere.
What is the university known for, academically? Its strong business and accounting majors, perhaps more than anything else.
What does upward of 75 percent of every entering freshmen class plan to do? Pre-med, pre-law and pre-business work.
While a number of these students may well be interested in academic pursuits, and while the success of such organizations such as the Philomathesians and Euzelians indicates that there is an active "intellectual scene" on campus, the administration's apparent expectation that it can mold mostly pre-professional students into intellectuals, the overwhelmingly "study hard, party hard" student body into one preferring ThinkPads and espresso to basketball and beer, is unfounded, undesirable and, I think, destructive.
Perhaps we should admit that the university does what it does very well, and leave it at that. As a regional school, we are one of the best in the South. As a member of the Atlantic Coast Conference, our basketball team is consistently excellent (last Sunday's game against Clemson notwithstanding). As a school preparing its students for graduate or professional programs, or for lucrative jobs in business, we do very well.
The perceived need to switch from a niche the university excels at fulfilling to one drastically different in matters social, academic and economic endangers much of what is good, even great, about the university today.
If we must take this road, let us take it with a great deal more caution and consideration than has been evident up to this point. Though one might not guess it from Brown's comments, students can contribute ideas and opinions, not just tuition, to the future of this university, if the administrators of the university will pause to listen.