Author: Judith Marklin

Houghton has been an influential place for me, and I’m sure many others can say the same.  It’s not perfect, but I have an education that I can be proud of.  While the community members, spiritual life activities, and athletics have all been apart of my “Houghton experience,” the classes and professors have been fundamental.  

These courses taught me how to learn, not what to learn.  Isn’t this what a liberal arts education is all about?  It was this commitment to a holistic education and the passion of the faculty members that drew me to Houghton in the first place, yet now I am feeling the rumblings of change. In my four years at Houghton, I have seen five (soon to be seven) professors in my departments leave or retire, and only one of them replaced.

Change is not necessarily a bad thing.  It is hard, no doubt, but there are beautiful discoveries and innovations with change. There are also terrible losses and destruction that come with change. Perhaps we need to reconsider the flux in tides when core values and guiding principles are at stake. To be honest, I wouldn’t recommend Houghton to prospective students based on the direction it is now going.

This realization is not an easy one to come to.  True, all of my departments are undergoing some type of downsizing (perhaps even removal), yet this is not what sparks my assertion. Coming from a humanities background, I do not simply want to blame it on the folks in Paine.  I also don’t want to fight against the tide of technology as online classes are on the rise.  As a pole vaulter who benefited immensely from its construction, I also don’t want to give into the easy bashing of KPAC (although it does seem to be a representation of where our priorities lie).  No, I think we need to pause and look closely at the changes that are taking place and ask ourselves if this is what we want.  What will Houghton look like ten years from now if it continues on this track of losing crucial faculty members without filling the gaps?

I’ve only been gone for a year, and already I’ve noticed a change.  After studying abroad for the Spring and Fall 2016 semesters, I was excited to return to Houghton and the caliber of classes that it offered. Yet upon looking at the Spring 2017 course offering, I was disappointed. There seemed to be only a handful of courses offered in my departments or areas of interest.  Additionally, the number of students in my classes has increased from an average of 10 to 12 people to 40 to 50 people. What happened to the 13:1 student-faculty ratio Houghton boasted when I was a prospective?

I was hoping to end my Houghton career with discussion-filled classes that would help me digest the many questions I returned home with after my time abroad in Nepal and India.  Instead, I am disappointed, both for myself and for those to come after me.

I know there are people on campus from all disciplines that came to Houghton for similar reasons that I did, and I assume there will be more students to come based on the sort of education it has offered.  Yet we must ask ourselves, what kind of education is this?  Is it one in which faculty members encourage questions, foster class discussion and engagement with difficult material, and care deeply about the material and the students?  Is it one that inspires students to be involved and committed to their classes, education, and overall development?  Is it one that sets high, yet achievable, expectations for students and faculty alike, so that we may never get comfortable in our knowledge?  Is it one that nurtures relationships that go beyond the classroom and graduation?  An old Maori proverb says, He aha te mea nui o te au? He tangata, he tangata, he tangata. What is the most important thing in the world?  It’s the people, it’s the people, it’s the people. We need to come together as a community of students, faculty, and staff and reassess our priorities. Are we placing emphasis on making cuts and boosting finances, or are we remembering the people who make us great?

When Pope Francis visited the United States two weeks ago, the whole world was watching.  And the whole world watched as a Muslim, a Jew, and a Christian embraced during the 9/11 multi-religious prayer service.  In that windowless room, in the basement of the 9/11 museum, the urgent call for peace was reverberating off the concrete walls.  

Yet some say that these cries are futile, that world peace is a romantic, unreasonable idea, a hopeless life preserver crashing amidst the waves, clung to by hippies and pacifists.  I’m not quite sure if I’m either one of those things, or perhaps both, but I will venture out into  the swells to say that world peace is possible.  I say this not with utmost certainty, but rather, with a feeble, yet deep-rooted hope that I am right.  By stating this claim, I am not trying to brush aside the terrible atrocities of this world, and I also understand the very real propensity towards hatred that, at times, seems to be almost human nature.

While my belief may not seem realistic in the fallen world that we are currently in, I think that it is the only choice we have.  To trust in the possibility of world peace is to do justice to all those that have suffered under the hands of inexplicable hatred.  This summer, I took twenty high school students to Japan on a three-week Japanese-American cultural exchange program, one that I had participated in myself three years earlier.  While there, we had the incredible opportunity to travel to Hiroshima and listen to the last English-speaking atomic bomb survivor.  It was hard to believe the words that spilled from her mouth, words that tried to make us understand the horrors of that day, August 6th, 1945.  But they were just words to us.  Only after, when we walked through the museum and saw the images and artifacts, did I understand what she meant when she described the skin falling off of people’s faces, like the outer skin on a roasted tomato being pulled clean.  

As I wandered through that museum for the second time, I did not want to be reminded of the hatred that haunts our world.  I did not want to be reminded of the effects of war upon the innocent.  I did not want to be reminded that the fighting didn’t end, that this atrocity is only one among many more.  Yet we must force ourselves to face these facts if we are going to be realistic about world peace.  It is not something to blindly follow, but rather, something that we must struggle with and remind ourselves daily.

We can no longer block out the news and shield ourselves from the hurt that surrounds our world.  We must listen to the stories of survivors with renewed fervor and passion, instead of despair.  We cannot desensitize ourselves to the hatred, but rather must glimpse the brilliant bits of raw humanity within all of this mess.  

Somberly, we exited the building and were guided through the Peace Park, marking the area surrounding the epicenter, through green tree groves, and over rivers in the golden afternoon light.  Slowly, the pit in my core unknotted itself as I saw a small child trying to match her stride with her father’s long gait.  And it began to grow into a seed of hope as my students discussed how they could tangibly bring about peace in our world.  

Now, when I think of Hiroshima, I see a beauty that eclipses the pain.  I see thousands of paper cranes fluttering in the wind – an offering of dedication and hope to restore peace in our world.  I see the deep, smiling eyes of the hibakusha, atomic bomb survivor, framed amidst a scarred face.      

So, for her sake and the sake of others, I will cling to this life raft of peace.  I will close me eyes and urge my soul to believe that a world like this is indeed possible, that she did not endure the excruciating pain of radiation for naught.  They said that nothing would grow in Hiroshima for seventy-five years after the bomb, but that fall, flowers were blooming.  Who are we to say that world peace is not possible?