For the last two years, I have lived in a theme house on Broad Street, which is due to undergo a Delta Upsilon-style refurbishment soon after my graduation. As an active member of the community in the house, this seeds a nagging worry at the back of my mind: what if the community and traditions that I have been involved in developing will get lost in the refurbishment, with everything but the fireplace painted over in a Reslife-approved shade of white?
This refurbishment is part of the “Broad Street Renewal,” an element of Colgate’s Third Century Plan focused on investing in the residential spaces that line the historic thoroughfare. “Broad Street Renewal” appears in Section III of the plan, “Enriching the Student Experience,” which is pitched in the plan with the tagline: “Creating a campus culture of community, ritual and pride, reflected in residential life, campus programs and athletics.”
My qualm with this tagline is that it claims to be invested in “creating” a campus culture. During my time at Colgate, I have found strong communities and culture through clubs and organizations, and since my first year, many of the friends I made and clubs I joined were in some way associated with the theme house that I now live in. These are existing communities that make up the existing campus culture, and my engagement with them guided my path through Colgate.
If asked what affinity groups I defined myself as being a member of, my residential commons is probably the last thing that I would think to mention, and yet continued investment in the commons system is the first bullet point in “Enriching the Student Experience.” Presumably, this is because it is seen as a good system through which to “create” campus culture. I have no problem with the idea of improving upon the systems and facilities that we have, but I think there is a delicate line between working to improve the student experience and instead implementing a new, “better” experience. From what I have seen, we are erring on the side of the latter option.
Campuses are defined by incessant change, and my goal is not to pose as the old man shaking his fist at the future. Ultimately, student communities and traditions will either persist or fade when they no longer serve the present. But the institutional pressure to develop a new future, even if it comes at the expense of the past, led me to wonder what future Colgate is trying to create.
The Third Century Plan states that its mission is “to establish the University, more firmly than today, as one of the small handful of truly outstanding colleges and universities in the nation and the world.” It’s a lofty goal, and it is the sort of thing that is nice to hear from your alma mater. The quality of your education from the mid-2020s will not have changed, but the reputation of the school will have. The stated mission is extrinsically motivated, aiming to make Colgate “outstanding” and therefore notable in the landscape of higher education to the outside observer.
In order to reach this point, Colgate will of course have to continue to raise both its admissions standards and the quality of education that it provides; these are outlined as pillars supporting the mission of the Third Century Plan. By choosing to put appearances first and allowing the improved quality of education to become a means to that end, Colgate makes itself more appealing to people who see education as a direct path to a “good” degree, which leads to a “good” job and a “good” life. This commutativity of degree quality to quality of life is the attitude that is encouraged by American higher education, where the exorbitant prices of tuition mean that if you are not guaranteed a good job at the end of the day, you receive a poor return on investment.
However, shifting the primary focus of education to the quality of the degree is a mindset that is fundamentally incompatible with the liberal arts. How can a student be expected to understand the value of exploring potentially fruitless pathways and engaging deeply with academia when they expect their degree to do the talking, or are pursuing a set pre-professional path towards a lucrative career? One path ignores the journey for the destination, and the other sets the journey on rails.
I am not frightened by the prospect that Colgate will become a different school once I leave it. I am suggesting that the University proudly defines itself as one of the few surviving liberal arts colleges, but that its plans for “improvement” seem primed to build a new kind of Colgate on the bones of the one we know instead of investing in the kind of character and flexibility that allow the liberal arts to thrive.
