By Joey Schunemann
There is a disconnect at Houghton. At a school where student-faculty relationships are built strong by invested professors and eager students, the lack of institutional communication to students regarding campus life changes sticks out like a sore thumb. When university-wide changes are made that affect student life, something that has little impact on incoming students but all the difference in the world to Houghton’s student body, it often feels like the last people to get consulted on those changes are the enrolled on-campus students.
I want to clarify right out of the gates that this is not a targeted piece meant to call out or accuse any faculty members of wrong behavior or even to prophesy some unstoppable decline of Houghton culture—quite the opposite. I see a sickness developing at a school built on community. It is a slow infection that, if left to fester, seriously endangers the living body of Houghton.
There is a certain wonder to pleasant surprises. If I wanted to be generous, I would say maybe it is the pursuit of that same wonder that inspires campus-wide decisions to be made so frequently without the pre-informing of current students. It’s time to acknowledge that it does not have that effect. When the Highlander Shop announces they are going to be accepting flex dollars from here on out, that’s a pleasant surprise, one that isn’t dangerous to keep quiet and was almost surely run by a student test panel anyway. Contrast that with the announcement not that the culturally iconic Houghton rock will be moved, but that it already has been moved. This does not bring wonder to a fictional student body that is happy to embrace a new season brought to us by a surprise change of environment. Instead, it leaves us, the tangible student body, feeling unvalued. The effect of making changes to student life without any student input, like the constantly complicated ice cream situation and the furniture change in Gillette, perpetuates the fear that Houghton as an institution puts its current students at the bottom of the priority list. This fear, whether true or untrue, is constantly validated by decisions made without the consent or informing of current students, decisions that seem to prioritize student intake over retention and the donations of old passionate alumni over the creation of new passionate alumni.
It is this lack of transparent trust and feeling of powerless discontent that is creating a generation of Houghton students who define their experience as “what hasn’t Houghton done to hurt me” instead of focusing on the loving student-faculty relationships and quality of coursework. Following the wake of COVID, it’s a wonder we can survive this second hard blow at Houghton culture in a few short years, and the only visible solution is an open-handed abandonment of institutional secrecy and an acceptance of public responsibility. We need a Student Constitution.
We need a document that stands alongside our moral community covenant, which by itself does not fully embody our Christian calling as an institution. We need a Constitution. We need an agreement between staff and students that requires open and honest communication so that in addition to being a community based on a common moral goal, we are held together far better by a bond of trust and open understanding. If the institution does not give students the chance to know what we are losing before it is gone, then self-sacrifice never comes into the equation and our Christian call crumbles into a stratified hierarchy of the knows and the not knows.
Despite this feeling of being tossed around and underappreciated by the Houghton institution, we cannot help but love this community and the people that fill it because of the mutual love we strive towards in our individual lives. This love only strengthens our fear that one day this thing that we have begrudgingly grown so fond of might disappear, and we have no idea how to refute that fear. When programs disappear, faculty shuffle around, and tuition seems only to go down and down, students are afraid that ultimately our Houghton is in danger, and that fear is validated by secretive changes and opaque policy. It’s time for Houghton to open up, and for the vague spirit of “the institution” to ask the culture that is being unwillingly changed if it’s ready for the next turn before it’s too late.★