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Native Studies 30th Anniversary Association President's Message Trent's Outstanding Research Record Convocation 2000 Photo Collage What's New in Academic Programs |
Your Rights as AlumniI loved the Superbuild scheme to consolidate Trent from the
moment I first heard about it and have thus stood in stark opposition
to most every other alumni voice with whom I've come into contact.
These people have turned to some of activism's tried-and-true
methods of influencing policy; a blitzkrieg of letter, unscientific
Internet "opinion" polling and simply assuming that
"everyone" shares their opinion that selling the Peter
Robinson and Catharine Parr Traill campuses will destroy Trent.
I am here now to share with all of you a little dose of reality:
the Superbuild project will help Trent and looking a gift horse
in the mouth is not an alternative method for university preservation. What effect will the closing of PR and Traill have on Peterborough?
Many Will Trent lose its uniqueness? I attended Trent primarily
because it of what it represented: Canada's lone small liberal
arts university. But many others were attracted by the Oxford-like
medieval imagery of the college system. Each college has its
own "character" which is reelected in (and on) its
membership. But tribal affinity does not require an unchanging
physical association. The downtown colleges were not unique merely
because of their physical location, to think so would merely
cheapen the collective experience. That experience can be moved
to the main campus or remade in some other fashion. Crumbling
downtown buildings are not necessary to play at dysfunctional
hippie communes, or whatever other social movements we associate
with the PR and Traill "tribes." Time is a wonderful distortion which can make you easily forget
the downtown campus buildings' physical destitution. How easily
you also forget the inconvenience of trundling back and forth
between the main and downtown campuses, an action suffered by
most every student and faculty member at one time or another. You can cherish your memories of Trent without hampering its
future. You can ensure that Trent's unique "soul" carries
on beyond your graduation primarily in how you remember it and
how you express that memory to others. But that is all. It is time to grow up, to stop telling other
people how to use other people's money. Simply being an alumnus
gives you no sovereign right to demand how your former university
should be run but being a donor does. If you want to have a say,
put your money where your big mouth is. Either exercise your
wallet or exercise some self-restraint. Trent has been in dire financial straits for years, and this
project promises to keep Trent afloat, perhaps even allow it
to prosper in the long run. So go get a job, donate some of that
income and earn your influence over the university rather than
demanding it. Howard Fienberg went on to get his Masters at the University of Essex and is now research analyst with the Statistical Assessment Service (STATS), a nonprofit nonpartisan think tank in Washington, D.C. |