Students Rising

The boisterous chants of last week’s student rally still ring in the air – and there is more to come. It seems that the students have learned, as students inevitably will, that they do have power and can affect change. They are the third leg of a stool that keeps this great institution standing and they are rising up in greater numbers. It is inspiring as a teacher to watch. You will recall that part of our Mission as a College is to “prepare students to be concerned and informed citizens.”

Throughout this unfortunate strike, it seems that there are those who underestimated the close connection that exists between students and teachers. The lion’s share of a student’s time at the College is spent in contact with teachers. To students, it might seem that the teachers and the students are the College.

Fox news in it’s oversimplification of just about everything still reports nightly that the teacher’s want more money. By now our students see through this rhetoric and have come to a more grounded understanding, as they inevitably will, of complex challenges that face the College including the need to correct broken funding models and the need to pay all members of the College Family a living wage.