Indulge me, if you will, while I ruminate a bit. This isn’t the traditional Mac Weekly opinion piece-I’m not pursuing an argument. Instead, I’ll offer some rambling reflections on the Macalester community.
Terry Boychuk
There never should have been a scandal. Beginning by at least last spring, allegations about Professor Boychuk made it to members of the faculty and the administration. These allegations, though, never made their way to the Dean of Students or the college’s grievance officer for students, Joi Lewis. There must be procedures in place to ensure that allegations that arise are reported to the appropriate officers. In the absence of these procedures, we’re likely to see a repeat of what happened on March 8: students raising allegations publicly because they perceive that the college has ignored the allegations-or worse, covered them up.
Likewise, there are clear problems with the confidentiality of the current grievance processes. If the process is to remain secret-and I’m not sure it should-it is important to conduct it in such a way that ensures the outcomes are not reported. The college should undertake a review of all of its grievance procedures with these and other concerns in mind.
Finally, the independence of The Mac Weekly is tremendously important to the college. Professor Boychuk’s lawyer’s letter last week to the editor of the Weekly and his letter to President McPherson, both attempts to keep the Weekly from reporting the outcome of the investigation, were inappropriate. The Weekly was accurately reporting facts that had already been made public by others. I know that members of the faculty have raised the possibility of the administration assuming some sort of oversight role over the paper. Let me be clear: this would be a tremendous mistake and would cause great harm to the spirit of community here. I’d hope too that a few principled alums of the college might withdraw financial support if such a thing were to happen.
Student Voice and Power
On a related note, there need to be better avenues of gathering student input into the tenure process. The names of every professor up for tenure review should be published by the faculty personnel committee each year and every student member of the community-and every faculty and administrator too, for that matter-should be notified of the opportunity to provide their written opinions about the professors in question to the personnel committee. The opportunities that now exist for student input into tenure are far too limited.
The tenure process is hardly the only site of power in this institution. Knowledge is power, and for the most part, students are far from well informed about the processes through which decisions are made here. Students have a responsibility, as members of the community, to inform themselves about and become involved in decisions that affect the community. The administration, Mac Weekly and MCSG have the obligation to make sure that this information is comprehensive and available to any community member who wants it.
As it stands, students don’t have a large enough say in the direction of this institution, whether we’re talking about which buildings are built and what they look like, what classes are offered, how Residential Life policies are developed, or the cold winters. I guess not much can be done about the weather, but there’s room for improvement almost everywhere else.
Here’s why it’s important to give students more power: the future of the college depends on it. If students felt like they had more input while here, there’d be less of an “us vs. them” mentality, students would feel better about the college, and they’d be more likely to contribute financially at graduation. Our alumni giving rate is one of the major statistics holding us back in the U.S. News Rankings. Current students are also a primary source of information for prospective students, so don’t we want them to have positive feelings about the place? And-gasp!-students know better than anyone else here what it’s like to be a student here. They live at Macalester for four years and learn what works and what doesn’t.
Students’ knowledge about the college could be invaluable to an institution trying to improve the way it does things so that it can sustain quality in the face of serious budgetary challenges.
Segmentation
Our student community is too segmented. Beyond international students, domestic students of color and domestic white students, we’re divided into athletes, gamers, enviros, activists, off-campus students, and plenty of other categories. Segmentation is natural, to a degree, and reflects divisions in the broader society, but there’s too much of it here. Students should realize that by transcending the borders between us and recognizing what we have in common, we have much to gain.
Multiculturalism
Briefly, because this issue has nearly been talked to death, I’d like to say that the work of the CMA and the multiculturalism steering committee appointed by President McPherson this semester has been heartening. This is an important value of the college, and much progress remains to be made. If the college were as open to student input as it has recently been regarding this issue, Macalester would be a more welcoming place.
Macalester’s Role in the World
It is important to situate our college in a broader context.
Macalester is a non-profit institution. Unlike corporations, whose role it is to increase the capital possessed by a privileged few, Macalester’s job is to make the world a better place. How? By producing graduates who will make the world a better place.
This is why I’m glad there are such great people here. People who care about the world around them and feel an obligation to serve. People who are intellectually curious and have a critical eye. People who believe that progress isn’t inevitable and it’s necessary to struggle for things like equality and democracy and liberty. To people who complain that Macalester is too liberal my reply is that the rest of the world is too conservative.
Our core values are key components of our institutional identity. So is our mission statement. I couldn’t agree more that it’s the college’s role to educate “citizen-leaders” for our world. Our need-blind admissions policy is also central. It provides us with a student body that is far more socioeconomically diverse than those at otherwise similar elite colleges.
None of us should be reluctant to criticize what’s wrong with Macalester. Nothing’s perfect, and recognizing our flaws is necessary for to improvement. But it’s important to make our criticism constructive. It’s important to be respectful. And, most of all, it’s important to realize that compared to almost anywhere else, Macalester is a really great place.
