Takin' It Easy

With the campus delightfully nestled in snow this week, it is appropriate to reflect on the welcoming and nurturing environment in which we exist. Perhaps, as our admissions materials suggest, we have found that long- sought after place where you can simply "be you."

I must, however, ask why allowing myself to be myself costs roughly $26,000 a year. I do believe I was myself when I was at home, but I came to EMU to learn and to grow. Yet with all this focus on nurturing and self-appreciation, are any of us offered the impetus to grow?

Lost in EMU's focus on nurturing the student and in its efforts to build a campus fit for an admissions viewbook is an attention to intellectual rigor. As a country club in which to find God, find oneself, and find a spouse, EMU excels. As a university that promotes a culture of intellectual wondering, the university struggles.

Listen as a professor asks a question in your next class. What likely follows the question is a sometimes interminable silence as students wait for someone to take their turn and offer a passable answer to satiate the professor. This is unsurprising, given a climate at EMU that casts class time as a necessary drudgery to endure. At EMU and many other institutions, student investment in the learning process ends with the tuition payment.

Consider the 2002 open letter from student leaders at Princeton University to its administration decrying the lacking intellectual culture on their campus. The letter describes "a strict dichotomy between structured, resume-building extracurricular activities and activities that provide a mindless release." Though Princeton and EMU are two vastly different universities, a parallel to our own university is readily found in these words. As students, we are overly focused on the future to the extent that our time at EMU becomes merely a place to earn a degree that will allow better jobs and more comfortable lives.

Writing in the Chronicle of Higher Education in 2001, Duke professor Stuart Rojstaczer describes this situation in his aptly titled article "When Intellectual Life is Optional for Students." He writes, "No one can say that Duke is a bad place for undergraduates...but getting a good education is only optional here, as it is at many institutions, and many students only go through the motions academically." The same could easily be said about EMU.

Where then does the responsibility lie? As a generation, we have existed in a heavily structured world where we were supposed to only go through the motions. The results of this upbringing led one Princeton professor, cited in the students' open letter, to remark that students are "disconcertingly comfortable with authority." We as students are far too willing to let our education happen to us at the control of our professors rather than taking ownership in our education. If we cannot somehow change this attitude, both our existence as students and our futures as leaders are bleak.

The responsibility does not end with students. Faculty and administrators have also fallen prey to our university's lagging intellectualism. We needn't forget the example left by the University Commons project. The project had two phases. The athletic wing was completed in 2000, but the university has yet to complete the theater, academic offices, and classrooms slated for phase two of the University Commons. Our priorities must not be lost again.

Perhaps this need for intellectual rigor will be answered in EMU's proposed curriculum restructuring, but Prof. Rojstaczer offers the following caution: "A curriculum change says nothing about the level of intellectual engagement by students. It's simply a way to organize and code classes." I challenge the entire university to invest far more in this evaluation of our curriculum. Let us make this university a place that engages the intellect.