Take a step back

TU is a different school today than the one I first visited in the summer of 2014. I’ve seen new buildings erected, presidents change, classmates and professors come and go. As I prepare to graduate and enter the ominous “real world,” I can’t tell if I am leaving behind a university in turmoil or one that is making necessary innovations for the sustainable future of academia.

I hope it’s the latter. My own experiences at this school have been far from ideal, filled with repetitive and uninformative classes, inadequate advising and frustrating bureaucratic inaction from certain parts of the administration. If there are changes to be made that can attempt to address some of these issues, I support the effort wholeheartedly. To Dr. Clancy and the PPRC, I hope that the sweeping reforms will pan out to the benefit of the student body. As for the students directly affected by these cuts, you have my deepest sympathies.

Even still, I urge everybody calling for resignations, or leveling accusations of fascism and corruption, to take a step back and examine things with a clear head. The trajectory of TU and of higher education as a whole is a complicated one, and emblematic of the uncertainty that clouds so much of our future. If we expect to make any progress, we have to be willing to sit down and remain civil, to engage with others with whom we disagree without blindly assuming evil intentions. I trust that these reforms will not be the end of TU, but if we cannot even peacefully engage on something so ultimately insignificant as our private university’s relative commitment to the arts, how are we supposed to tackle the larger, more systemic problems we will be confronted with outside of the ivory tower?

You’ll forgive me for mounting my soapbox one last time, but I’m going to miss having such a privileged platform to share my views. I’ll end things on a more personal note.

Thank you to Dr. Mintz, Dr. Dutton, Dr. Hart, Professor Hinkle and all other faculty and staff who made a profound impact on my academic career. Thank you to my brothers in Phi Mu Alpha, who helped me find my voice. Thank you to the editors and writers of The Collegian, who have helped expand my worldview, let me rant endlessly about the Yankees, Celtics and Patriots and taught me everything I know about leadership. And thank you to my friends, who have helped rescue me from darker places than I ever imagined I would experience in college. I know I have let some of you down, but you will never know the true measure of the impact you have made on my life. And you will be with me forever.

On and ever upward.