Recently President Wharton sent a letter to all students via e-mail explaining the virtues of changing the name of PSC to include University. While I would like to support such a name change, I think that spending the time and money to do so avoids fixing the real problems with this campus that the name change is only serving to cover up.
First, I would like to address the faculty that President Wharton brags so much about. I admit that there are some pretty spectacular people teaching at Plymouth State College. A few I have had for some of my classes come to mind. Yet, I can’t help but also recall that every semester I have also had at least one full-time faculty teaching a class where the curves on the test grades were so drastic to make a failing grade a 19 or lower out of a possible 100 points. Some faculty will let people failing all assignments pass the class if they get at least a passing grade on the final (including the bare-minimum D-), perhaps to prevent anyone looking into why so many students are flunking their class. In my experiences with such faculty, it wasn’t so much that the tests were difficult, but rather the material was poorly explained, the faculty was unapproachable, and/or the tests were unrelated to in-class or reading material. In fact, one such class didn’t even have required reading material.
While on the topic, let us not forget how PSC treats those who teach here. A majority of those teaching here are part-timers, who are given part-time pay, but dropped a course load often more demanding than those given to the full-time faculty that are given more money. It seems that pride in teacher excellence used as a reason for the name change is much like a sweat shop seeking ISO 9001 certification based on its devoted workers. Furthermore, pride in students is cited as another reason for the change. An institution that treats students like grade-shool children to be babysat does not show much pride in its students. I must admit I was almost surprised when I saw the letter asking for student input, but then I noticed that one of the big motivations for the change was more money for the college, and that there was no real information given as to who the students could contact to help out, or how exactly they could find these people to contact.
At Keene State College, students have a great deal of input as to what goes on with their school. Off-campus students have dial-up access to the Internet through school, and the support from that program is organized and managed by a student organization. Their senate includes a mixture of students, faculty and staff. Here we like to keep our Student Senate segregated. Last year, the college held an “All College Planning Day” that was open to everyone on campus, yet little was done to get the word out to students. In fact, I had to hear about it from my campus employer at the time, and I was the only student to show up and voice an opinion. When Student Senate took initiative and set up an open forum for discussion of the arming of Campus Police, the administration stormed the Senate office, chewed out the student leaders trying to set the forum up, and then tried to shut it down. So much for pride in student achievement and encouraging true leadership.
As far as competitiveness, I think the issues addressed so far serve to illustrate some of the deeper reasons why we are having more trouble competing.
Then we come to value. This is where the money shows up: seemingly the true reason PSC wants to make a change. When appearing before Student Senate last year, one of the reasons President Wharton addressed the desire to leave “state” out of the new name was because the state provides only a small percentage of the funding for the college. I agree this is bad, but let us not forget that this institution is still in existence because of a piece of state legislation, and as such is still accountable to the state government. Beyond that, the college should not be relying so much on state funding anyhow, much like student organizations on this campus are expected to not rely so much on their allocated budgets or CEA funds. This college needs to go about fundraising. And it does, but I have issue with this, too. PSC relies too much on alumni and the community to foot the bill. A friend of mine who is now PSC alumni was sent a letter one week before his graduation asking him to “give to the college that gave so much to him”. First, what about giving us students time to pay off the loans we had to take to even give you a budget in the first place. Second, how about more than just a free e-mail account for alumni. As far as I can tell, alumni are discouraged even in the subtlest ways from getting involved with student organizations and providing guidance, or from giving meaningful guidance to the college as a whole. It seems as though the college’s position on the matter is “give us your money, show up once in a while so we can take a picture for our lovely little magazine and answer our surveys when we send them to you.” Community are even more discouraged from participating. Perhaps we should get more involved in trying to establish good community programs and business opportunities rather than setting up so many committies for the beautification of the college. No matter how much you spray the Lysol, a litter box that stinks will continue to stink until you change the litter.
My last issue is frivolity. A few years ago, the college spent a great deal of money on brick sidewalks because, at the time, that was the answer to attracting more students. Last year, the college spent a great deal of money on designing a new logo because, at the time, that would give us a competitive edge. Now we’re focusing time and money on changing the institution’s name because, at this time, it’s going to give us a competitive edge and attract more students. In case no one noticed, the brick crosswalk on Highland Street, just in front of Career Services, is now half tar with a shoddy patch job for excessive wear and tear. Someone should have thought of this well in advance. After all, if bricks were effective for street construction, we would still have cobblestone streets in our cities. And where is that new fancy logo that was going to give us “brand recognition” and a more competitive edge? The point is that objectives such as these are superficial, and in the end turn out to be an incredible waste of time and money that could have been spent on more important matters, such as improving campus buildings, better fire protection and insurance, paying part-time faculty better salaries and/or hiring some more part-timers to full-time positions with benefits.
My words of advice for this college, in the plainest analogy I can think of, is as follows: if one’s head is stuck up one’s rear, one shouldn’t worry about improving the smell, but rather worry about getting the head out of the rear.