Ezekiel Kingsbury, Editor-in-Chief
The students of Beloit College need not be further enlightened toward the decline of the liberal arts. Within an industrious society, an appreciation of culture, a delight in breadth, and an ability to articulate are not particularly economically viable virtues. This American culture, so fearful of community and, as a byproduct, fearful of mystery and a lack of meaning, detests the liberal arts as a waste of money and time, which is the cardinal sin of industry. It is no wonder then, that Beloit College’s enrollment has steadily declined over the past decade, especially after the pandemic, and its students’ interest in humanities majors has sharply nosedived.
Is there any point in education besides a career? The liberal arts once had a response to this in the affirmative. No longer, it often seems.
Under this career-obsessed cultural framework, it is no wonder that Beloit’s business-related majors saw growth and physical science degrees remained steady, and during that same period, humanities majors suffered, as reported by the Chronicle. In response to the decline in enrollment and humanities, Beloit is introducing new “schools” to centralize student resources and more clearly segue classroom learning to a career, according to a Chronicle interview with President Eric Boynton. This change will make the College far more appealing to prospective students, who, so inundated with the milieu of career-oriented learning, might dismiss Beloit for its liberal arts status. Further, Beloit is recruiting high school students far earlier in their education and is focusing far more on local students. I believe this change is, for the most part, a good thing. It is good to provide students with the resources needed to succeed post-graduation, and it is good to increase enrollment. Still, a philosophy of bettering our appeal to possible students is unintelligible to a current student population that sees only decay, and it is necessary to explain to the administration why.
The following absences, like everything, exist within a context that justifies them to a certain degree. Further, many of these absences are being addressed by the administration. Still, it is valuable to look at these administrative decisions stripped of context, as this is the lens through which the student body will primarily understand them, and therefore, mostly stripped of context is how these decisions will be listed. (For example, a renovated library was sorely needed, and it is good that the College is remodeling it. Still, not having a library inevitably stirs up revulsion, despite administrative explanation.) Purely to paint a picture of the student body’s attitude, this list presents a series of happenings, but it cannot hope to capture all:
The Neese Theater will be closing its doors indefinitely at the end of this semester. This, coupled with the merging of the Music, Theater, and Dance departments into the Department of Music and Performance/Production, signals a lack of interest in the arts as a whole.
There is no current, functioning library. The Powerhouse’s facade is a sorry substitute for a quiet place to study, and there is little in the way of checking out physical books. An interlibrary loan, which often takes weeks to produce something that a student can use, is insufficient for a student’s needs at any place of learning, and the echoey quality of the Powerhouse does not suit it well for studying. To do the latter, one often must retreat to their dorms or hope Pearsons is not busy.
Food services do not truly exist on the academic side of campus. Perhaps the new library will fulfill this need, but paltry packaged food-stuff at Pearsons is a simulacrum of the fabled DKs advertised to many of us when we had not yet committed to Beloit.
Residential and academic buildings are falling into disrepair and decay. (I should say, the College is planning on renovating Whitney this summer, which will be a welcome change.)
Campus culture is waning. This is due, in no small part, to an administrative failure to invest in tradition. Where have our festivals gone? Will they ever return? So many stories have been passed down generations and braggadociously recorded on the College’s website as evidence of a thriving campus culture, but (and, certainly, much of the blame rests here on the students) little in the way of ritual endures.
It is good to prepare for the future. It is good to invest our limited resources into that which will ensure the College’s survival. However, despite its high retention rates, the current student body needs and deserves tangible services from the administration that go beyond career readiness. There is such little evidence that our experiences at Beloit matter to the administration. After all, we have already committed to pay. Are emails from the Dean’s office advising us to look out for each other enough? Is the kindness of the housekeeping and maintenance staff, the generosity and gentleness of our professors, or the attempts to help, despite the infernal bureaucracy of the College, by individual, altruistic members of the administration enough to hold back the rot and produce a feeling of unity on this campus? A feeling of belonging?
No. A career-oriented education, despite its worth in this American society, is not sufficient, and only highlighting services that aim for post-graduate ends misses the point. Future students should not be the only ones reaping the benefits of a Beloit education. Each of us chose Beloit, a liberal arts college, for a reason, and this choice often disappoints. Anxiety is not overcome by rationale. No amount of context given can be sufficient to reduce the unease that being at Beloit produces.
Email advisories and gestures of goodwill, rare Powerhouse events and t-shirt giveaways, and weekly email trivia, while appreciated, are empty flourishes, evidence of a misunderstanding of student needs and desires. Consistent and relevant, substantial services that reify what Beloit touts itself to be, that acknowledge that Beloit College is its (current) students, are desperately lacking, and there must be a real attempt made on the part of the administration to address this desperation.
In the words of the American novelist and activist Wendell Berry, if Beloit College is to do good, “then the time to do it is now. [It shall] receive no reward for promising to do it in the future.”
This is not a request for an explanation, nor is it a specific demand. This is a recording of want and documentation of antipathies. The student body does not need more explanation. The student body needs a school that remembers what it is.
Featured Image: Ivan the Terrible and His Son Ivan, Ilya Repin
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