The cost of keeping up appearances

It happens every year, without fail. The tuition hike. When you get back from winter break and check your campus mail to find a letter from President Greer, you invariably know what’s coming. It starts off positive – always positive – with talk about mallard ducks and the success of Wesleyan sports, but it ultimately ends up right where we expected it to: citing the impossibly costly duties of running such an institution. And yet, when you look around, you can’t help but wonder if there aren’t perhaps some priority problems that contribute to such costliness.

Primary example: we need a new residential village. There aren’t enough parking lots on campus and the ones that do exist aren’t big enough. Roofs leak. So what is our first priority? Install a new fountain behind Boyd Dining Center. To build a new fountain when the two fountains we do have don’t work anyway – or at least, no one knows whether or not they do, because they’re empty. And why, exactly, are we constructing a fountain behind Boyd? Especially when it’s in front of an entrance that few students ever use?

Because it’s not about the students. It’s about impressing the off-campus guests who attend the lectures in Boyd. The flower beds weren’t enough – it was decided that we need one more fountain on campus. Which, I admit, will be impressive – as long as it keeps working and isn’t constantly drained like the other two located smack in the middle of campus. Prices. Two dollars for a hot dog. $1.50 for a soda. $1 for a pack of Starburst. A lot of money by anyone’s standards, but the college needs to earn some money.

And the good patrons of Wesleyan basketball games are willing to make the contribution to the school (since the $27,000 most of them pay in tuition and board just isn’t enough). And yet, until recently, we were giving away at least $25 per game in free food, not only to the employees, but to friends of the “powers that be” in order to “make a good impression.” Is the impression worth it? What’s the real price we’re paying … and more importantly where is it going?

Remember where you come from

Progress is good – that’s an undeniable fact. As Will Rogers so eloquently put it, “Even if you’re on the right track, you’ll get run over if you just sit there.” If you’re not moving forward, then you’re being surpassed by those who are. There’s no arguing that. But what happens when you try to move forward at hyper-speed? Does it suffice to say that warp-speed progress will inevitably result in a fiery crash?

As an institution, we pride ourselves on being a good liberal arts school (although, if you were to poll the student body on what “liberal arts” means exactly, I suspect that 95 percent of them would look confused and come up with something about General Studies Requirements). But what, apart from the liberal arts tag, do we represent? Tradition? Nope. Academic reputation? Probably not. Athletic excellence? So far this year, maybe.

But even that’s a work in progress. (A difficult one, however, when teams on average have five players transfer out each year.) It would appear, at least to the average student, that good ol’ V-Dubb is in the midst of an identity crisis. Or, as it reaches the 43-year mark, perhaps a mid-life crisis. Or do the two go hand-in-hand? Whatever the reason, it would appear that Wesleyan has lost its sense of self somewhere along the way, and you can’t help but wonder if it is a result of the desperate need to “keep up” with a world that lives up to different expectations. A world constantly demanding progress and renovation – a world from which we thought we were safe in our cozy little nook back by Lake Taylor.

A battle of progress vs. tradition. It has been suggested that the bell tower should be removed from college materials. The only icon that the school has that makes it unique apparently carries “too-religious” a connotation, thereby scaring off potential students. And yet “Wesleyan” -- a clear Methodist reference -- is in our name. The jig is up. Forget the students who are already here and are trying to latch on to a sense of tradition, a sense of school pride. The ones with an off-chance of coming here might feel put off by the image of the chapel. (The idea that the chapel is more off-putting that the $18-million Student Center is attractive seems hard to swallow, given that the 2003 freshman class was our biggest ever.) But I digress.

We may add a third color to athletic uniforms, as blue and white are far too common (think Old Dominion University, Christopher Newport University, Hampton University.) And so the little school who doesn’t even share an athletic conference with any of the aforementioned schools must (yet again) change its image. Too much, too fast. We cannot be a school founded on a tradition of excellence when we cannot maintain tradition itself.