FORUM
Enough of Quaker values, what about Quaker process?
October?, 2011
A READER'S RESPONSE TO "GREEK LIFE: AN
UNTAPPED POSSIBILITY," PUBLISHED ON
SEPTEMBER 30.
There's a running joke in my Environmental Planning
class — if you ever don't know the answer to a question,
just talk about impervious surfaces, smart growth, or
global warming, and hope for partial credit.
Guilford's Quaker testimonies are the half-credit
equivalent for administrators and students at Guilford
looking to advance any number of agendas. Most employ
some variation of the following argument:
1. My proposition is rooted in
integrity / simplicity / equality / peace.
2. This value is a Quaker testimony.
3. Ergo, my proposition is
consistent with Guilford's Quaker values.
For instance, Laura Devinsky, in her
recent exploration of the possibility of
Greek life on the Guilford campus, went to
great pains to demonstrate the possibility
that fraternities and sororities could be
communities grounded in equality. In
discussing what Greek Life at Guilford
might look like, Laura essentially reduced
it to community-service groups: "groups
of people who work hard and have fun,"
who don't haze, party excessively, or
discriminate in their admissions. Despite Laura's and
my very different understandings of what constitutes
Greek Life, we, like most of the Guilford community,
take Guilford's Quaker values seriously. An unfortunate
consequence of this seriousness is attempts to map
Quaker values onto propositions that have no basis in
Quaker testimonies.
This tendency is rampant at Guilford. For another
example, look no further than the final line of your
tests and essays: "I have been honest and observed no
dishonesty." Or, more recently, look to your Community
Senate, who recently drafted and approved a social honor
code: "As a member of the Guilford Community I strive to
be honorable in my actions through the Core Values and
my experiences."
Though these statements seem to promote integrity at
face value, implicit in the development of an honor code is
the idea of two-tiered behavior, that one behaves one way
in normal interaction, and another way when on one's
honor. Both these codes fly in the face of early Friends
who were imprisoned and died for the belief that people
should practice honesty in all speech and interaction, and
trust others to do the same. I daresay students who didn't
by such a proposition! The unmitigated access of each
individual to the Inward Light makes Quakerism open
to continuing revelation. But all values and testimonies
emerge contextually, and to appropriate values without
mention of context is as disrespectful as it is ineffectual.
Guilford has tarried at the same crossroads for quite
some time. Should we run an entirely secular institution
with the occasional, respectful nod to our heritage, a
la Johns Hopkins or Swarthmore? Or should we fully
embrace Quaker processes of discernment as our means
of all institutional interaction?
Personally, I think the country already has a wealth
of small, liberal-arts colleges committed to diversity,
academic-excellence, and community.
Most of these schools are far better
equipped to enact their values than we
are, inasmuch as they have endowments
twice, if not ten times the size of ours; a
few might even have students, faculty,
and staff just as committed as Guilford's.
What separates Guilford isn't our values
or the decisions we make, it's how we
make them. Our Quaker forerunners,
from George Fox to Francis King, have
bequeathed us tested guidelines for
communal interaction, and to employ
them responsibly in our own day
requires serious study and meditation on
,. , , , . . the original intentions and situations that
already strive to be honorable m their actions won't do so prompted them — something we as students seem to have
now because Community Senate got marker-board happy, neglected.
The list goes on--next time you have a free afternoon. We stand at a crossroads and, before rushing either
go to the Friends Historical Collection in the library and direction, we should embrace the dynamic decision-
see how early Friends would have felt about taking off making processes of the early Friends and discern for
work for Martin Luther King, Jr., Day or the proposed ourselves who, as an institution, we want to be.
expansions to Founders. This isn't to say the Guilford Chances are by the time we figure it out, we'll have
community should dogmatically strive to follow every already arrived,
leaning of the early Quakers — indeed, seventeenth
century Friends would have themselves been horrified -Andrew Taylor, senior
...we, like most of the Guilford community, take Guilford's
Quaker values seriously. An unfortunate consequence of .this
seriousness is attempts to map Quaker values onto propositions
that have ne basis in Quaker testimonies.
letter to the Editor
Greensboro resident speaks out against Cornell article
A READER'S RESPONSE TO "CORNELL
JUMPS IN WITH THE SHARKS,"
PUBLISHED ONLINE SEPTEMBER 22.
I was dismayed by the campaign
I profile article the Guilfordian recently
I published on District 5 City Council
I Candidate Jorge Cornell. The article
I is filled with unfounded claims and
conjecture so absurd it skirts libel.
First, a minor problem: the article
is immediately made suspect by the
, hyperbolic description of the cafe
where the interview took place. It
[ smacks more of a creative writing
exercise than a piece of news writing;
that sort of lush description lends itself
to distracting from the facts rather than
underscoring them.
But this excusable flourish reflects a
, serious, systemic problem within the
I article. I believe the article is a polemic
designed to make a bold generalization
founded by a racist, classist gut reaction
to the civic efforts of a "gang leader."
For the record, Jorge Cornell is a member
of a street organization that does not
identify as a 'gang.' He is the Inca, meaning
state leader, of The Almighty Latin King
and Queen Nation, not the "self-admitted
Latin Kings and Queens gang leader," as
the article alleges.
The ALKQN was instrumental in
brokering the 2008 peace treaty between
the street organizations within NC, before
its disruption and eventual conclusion in
forming the Paradigm Shift. The ALKQN
does not abide criminal activity by its
members and instead is focusing on
improving the conditions of its members
through community building.
I think it was remiss of the article to
describe the G58 area as "farther from
the integral part of District 5 and its
inner-community." Viewing a map of
the archipelagic District 5, it is should be
abundantly clear no part of it that could be
described as "inner."
Morgan mentions "the police
accountability issue" and never expounds
upon what it entails, but still feels
comfortable corroborating his implicit
disagreement with it by using a quote from
"senior Natalie Smith," whose status as an
expert on these matters fails to precede her.
To be clear on this, what Cornell is
concerned with is ending the harassment
of people of color and the mistreatment of
folks in general when they are incarcerated.
In the second half of the article, the
article's argument further crumbles and
digresses, resorting to vague rhetorical
questions ("is your concern for the
community and its youngsters foremost in
your mind?") and an unsolicited suggestion
that holding a town-hall meeting might be
a good idea.
The bit about Cornell's sunglasses is a
sloppy and unsubtle metonymy for a level
of wealth and distance from his potential
constituents that simply don't exist. Cornell
works a wage labor job to support his two
daughters.
As for the "political learner's permit"
comment about the need for experience
to govern well, it suggests that in
order to be an effective politician, you
must have already been an effective
politician. This is a logically unsound
argument.
District 5 Resident Tyrone Joyner's
comment that the Cornell campaign
is generic says nothing; his comment
that "in order to be productive you
must be consistent" is an irrelevant
political truism.
The litany of baseless and
uninformed assessments in the article
is concluded by mentioning that
Trudy Wade was too busy to do an
interview, and completely ignoring
the details of her campaigns past or
the platform she's currently running.
I encourage folks who are interested
in the election to do independent
research and make informed
decisions.
-Daniel Stainkamp