PAGE 2 — THE DECREE — OCTOBER 17,1986
Opinions and Etlitorials
Students who try
can find activity
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WIlAOHWlftBAILV'fja*^ COLLEGE PRESS SERVICE
Wesleyan has special role
Semesters have come and
gone here at Wesleyan without
every one getting involved in
the various extra-curricular ac
tivities offered. We hear the
same old thing each year,
"There's nothing to do around
here." This year, as in past
years, students are saying it
again.
There is absolutely no rea
son for tliese negative attitudes
because with a small college
such as Wesleyan come more
opportunities for students to
participate. Problems of bore
dom can be solved with a short
visit to the Student Union, the
gym, or the music annex.
Various opportunities await
the Wesleyan student The Stu
dent Life Department offers
you student government, year
book and newspaper staffs, and
various social and activity com
mittees. Some of these activi
ties may not be well pub
licized, but all you have to do
is ask someone. The people
By THE ARCHBISHOP
There I was just after moving
all of my belongings into my room.
I slipped on my flowered Jams,
grabbed my economy-size bottle of
Coppertone and glided out of my
dorm in hopes of a swim in the
"New" pool. As I approached the
gym, the anticipation of catching
rays by the "New" Wesleyan pool
was agonizing.
Arriving at the area that had
been designated for a "New" swim
ming pool, I lowered my cool Ray-
Ban's to look in astonishment
at????? No, not another mirage!
This was the typically beautiful
Wesleyan lawn I was gazing at as
the fragrance of Coppertone filled
the air. Where was the pool that
had been talked about? Yes, I
thought Dr. Carleton McKita had
plans for a pool too! What about
all of those survey cards I filled out
with the "Swimming Pool" option
distinctly checked.
I just wanted to go for a swim.
Wouldn't Dr. McKita and his
minions enjoy a swim once in a
while, why? why? why?!!! It is not
nice teasing the students about a
pool. It is bad enough that a
who complain the most about
student life here at Wesleyan
are usually the people who
don't have enough sense to open
their mouth and ask about it.
NCWC has many fine ath
letic teams, all you have to do
is have the talent. Even if
conference sports aren't your
bag, there are always intra
murals offered such as soft
ball, football, and volleyball.
For the musically inclined
Wesleyan offers the Jazz Band,
the Wesleyan Singers, and the
all-new Archbishops rock
band.
Extra-curricular activities
are essential to a well-rounded
college education. This applies
in tlie real world also. An
outgoing student is more prone
to be hired than a student who
just went to college to attend
classes. Plenty of opportuni
ties await the Wesleyan stu
dent. It is just a matter of
chosing what you would like
to do.
student cannot go back to his or
her dorm after classes and enjoy a
cold beverage of his or her choice.
I guess there won't be any
swimming either.
We pay a decent amount of
money to attend Wesleyan, so why
can't we at least get a pool that
could be enjoyed by all? What in
the world is Student Life for
anyway? It should be to provide for
the students. I think Dr. McKita
owes the Wesleyan community a
sincere explanation about the
swimming pool. How can students
have faith in Student Life if the
promises are not fulfilled?
I am not the only student who
is steamy over the pool issue. I am
told that in recruiting new students
big possibilities for a pool were
discussed. How would you feel if
you had decidcd on Wesleyan over
another school because there were
big plans for a swimming pool? I
would be slightly ticked off. I hate
to say it, but this issue is not going
to slip away without a very good
explanation.
Oh! If your wondering what I
did that disappointing afternoon. I
staggered back to my dorm and
took a long cold shower with my
Jams on, of course.
By LINDA FLOWERS
Yale has a new president. A
young man named Benno Schmidt.
Mr. Schmidt is himself a Yalie, a
legal scholar who returns now as
Yale’s president after a stint as dean
of the law school at Columbia. In
his inaugural address the new
president had this to say about
education in the liberal arts:
There is a simple truth about
liberal arts education and that is —
that studying what is outside us in
an open, curious, even playful way
can give us two indispensable gifts.
One is happiness. And the other is
the gift of empathy.
Our education (he continued) in
the end prepares us not only for our
profession, but for the two-thirds of
our life that is not about our jobs,
our work, our status. But about
dailyness. About inwardness. About
our capacities for affiliation.
(NewYorkTimes, Sept. 21)
Nothing new here, to be sure.
Some of us may even wince at the
implication (yet again!) that a man's
profession can be so neatly separated
from his dailyness; we may argue
that it is precisely such compart-
mentalization as this that is both a
main cause of the split between
liberal education and education-for-
work, and its unfortunate result.
Nevertheless, Mr. Schmidt's point
bears attention; that real education,
while it may often include training
for a particular job, does not consist
essentially in such training.
This is the distinction — and
crucial it is — that prevents a small,
liberal-arts college like North Caro
lina Wesleyan from becoming a
community college or a technical
institute. Our comparison with these
other schools must always take into
account the fact of our inherent dif
ference from them; such difference
that for us to think in terms of our
being "better than" (or "worse than")
they, is tantamount to comparing
apples with oranges.
Wesleyan's mission, unlike that
mandated by the General Assembly
for these schools, is not tied to, nor
does it derive from, the needs of the
eastern North Carolina marketplace;
less yet with whether our seniors
have a specific job awaiting them
upon graduation. Our purpose is
more serious than this. The college
was founded on another set of
principles; the church continues its
support because it thinks we are
providing something other than what
can be had elsewhere in the region.
The question is, properly, not
whether jobs await our seniors, but
whetherour seniors are educated, and
hence worthy of their hire; or, rather,
whether our graduates — no matter
their major — are qualitatively dif
ferent because they have attended this
particular college.
Of course I want our students to
find desirable employment; more
than this, however, I want them all
their lives to be capable observers of
the human comedy, able to tell a
hawk from a handsaw, proficient
citizens of their time and place. I
want them "to feel what wretches
feel." I want them to toil in the
vineyard honorably, and with
passionate intensity, and once in a
while, at least, I want them to read a
book or go to a play, look — really
look — at a painting or a red wheel
barrow, listen to Mozart, write a
letter to the Daily Telegram or The
New York Times — one that I won't
cringe to read.
And none of these things, I am
convinced, can they fully be or do if
they persist in thinking of their
education as — if they are, indeed,
taught that education is — primarily
education-for-work. If we ourselves
don't understand this, or don't believe
it in our bones to be true, then the
real crisis of the college is not
financial.
But do Yale and Wesleyan really
have anything in common? What
after all, does Schmidt’s idealism
have to do with us, such high-
minded sentiment with us? Yet
surely it cannot be only the rich and
powerful whose obligation it is to
invoke the ideal; if we believe that,
then we forfeit at the outset any end
worth having, and we may as well
be quiet.
No such assumption, it is to be
noted, prevents a small and in-
poverished church from thinking its
mission every bit as holy as that
animating its larger and wealthier
sisters. Why need a small college?
Wesleyan, in fact, ought to be twice-
charged, as both a college and as a
church-related college: not to lose its
soul, though it does need money;
and its soul inheres in its foundation
and continued existence as a liberal-
arts college.
Our difference with Yale is (or
should be) of degree, but our dif
ference with these other schools is of
kind; thus the fundamental inappro
priateness when we invoke them as
models or for the sake of com
parison.
Yale has a new president So,
indeed, does Wesleyan. Let us trust
that in that coincidence all similarity
does not end.
OFFICIAL STUDENT NEWSPAPER OF
NORTH CAROLINA WESLEYAN COLLEGE
Editorial Board — Eva Bartley, Donald Martin, Matt McKown,
Barry Nethercutt, Christopher OsUing, Tom Rivers, Linda Smith,
Laura-Lee Spedding, Greg Williams.
Illustrator — David Gilliam
Photographers — Glenn FuU^ll, Steve Wiggins
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Wesleyan College, Wesleyan College Station, Rocky Mount, NC
27801. Policy is determined by the Editorial Board of The Decree.
Rcpublication of any matter herein without the express consent of
the Editorial Board is strictly forbidden. The Decree is composed
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Opinions published do not necessarily reflect those of North
Carolina Wesleyan College.