This is the third installment of an ongoing series that will investigate the Houghton Star archives.
If you would like to check out some old issues of the Star, they can be found in the periodicals stacks on the basement level of the Houghton Library. The full college archives, also located on the basement level, are open to the public from 1-4 p.m. every Friday afternoon.
The included on this page was originally published roughly fifty years ago, in the March 8, 1968 issue of the Houghton Star.
Well, what place does student power have in the institution and administration of policy at Houghton College? Those who recall the title of last week’s column might approach anything that follows with a suspicion that student leaders are nothing more than pawns of both the administration and the students, moved by the will and whim of either in any given situation. The characteristic of Houghtonians to make constant appeals to authority, often in preference to individual thinking, demands an authoritarian political structure at all levels of College affairs. It is the juncture between the students body and the faculty and administration the student government must deal with this characteristic.
The second factor in politics at Houghton is a direct result of the constant upward look for easy answers. Political apathy and status quo satisfaction are viewed by most students as distinctly separate, the former representing the students and the latter representing the “powers that be.” I submit that satisfaction with the present state of affairs by those who administer and apathy about the possibilities are of like kind. Both are offspring of the intrinsic attitude at Houghton—contentment with the answers handed down from the levels above, regardless of the degree of discontentment from the levels beneath.
Political apathy in one form of another seems to be exhibited at times in the faculty by an unwillingness to realistically review and revise policies on campus that are obviously inconsistent with their enforcement. For example, there are many “rules” in our present Student Guide which are never enforced. Then why keep them? Why cannot the Houghton community, both students and faculty, revise the Guide in light of the kind of place we both desire—apart from the fear of what the “constituency” or the absent Board might say? The Senate has not been entirely neglectful in suggesting changes; but her representatives in the past and present have been mindful of this prevalent attitude under which these suggestions may be smothered.
Nor is the student body free from a lethargic attitude toward student government, including those in supposed positions of leadership. It is true that dissatisfaction with the status quo prevails among students it is also true that there is a great deal of security and satisfaction to be found in mere dissatisfaction. This is especially true the disgust can be displaced from the original issue to those who represent the issue to those in authority.
Student government at Houghton is bounded by the attitude we have discovered and have attempted to describe here. The accusation of political anemia can be lodged only in the context of an understanding of this basic problem—and the apathy which it effects on all levels of the College.
—STUDENT SENATOR
