Administration's minds made up

I think it's quite telling that Dean of Students Tammy Gocial had already made up her mind to implement the swipe locks-before the trustee meeting had even taken place. "We are going to do it this year, but the question is how" ("Dorms may require swipe cards" Oct. 25 2007).

Communication between the administration and student body has been awful in the past couple years. It seems we have had a rush of new administrators come in all at once, each of whom have very specific ideas about how Kenyon should be run. Even if these ideas go against the very values on which Kenyon was founded, they are implemented anyway. Students are the heart of Kenyon, but we are being overlooked.

An example of the lack of communication lies in the relationship between the Office of Residential Life and the student body. I am one of three Community Advisors who have resigned since the beginning of this school year. While I cannot presume to know the reasons of my peers for their resignations, this is a disturbing trend-especially at a college where the Community Advisor position has always been highly sought. While I loved my residents and fellow CAs, I felt that the administration was taking advantage of the CAs with the number of new policies and practices that have been sprung on them since their arrival on campus for training in August. Yet the fact that Community Advisors are dropping like flies seems to be telling the administration nothing.

What is Residential Life doing about these sudden vacancies? It is offering positions to students-including first-year students. Kenyon has never before allowed first-year students to be Community Advisors. It makes little sense to have a first-year overseeing a first-year hall, especially after less than two months of being a student at Kenyon. Several CA's I have talked to say they brought up this very concern to Assistant Dean of Students for Housing and Residential Life Alicia Dugas and the Assistant Directors, only to have Dugas reply that she herself was a first-year CA at her own college. So, does this mean that something that might work at any random college will be right for Kenyon? A first-year CA cannot offer anywhere near the level of support that an upper-class student can, simply because the first-year has not had the experience that a year at Kenyon brings. If first-year students join the shrinking ranks of the Community Advisors and are able to handle all the responsibilities of the job as well as gain the respect of their fellow first-year hall-mates, then kudos to them. I, however, cannot see how such a practice will be anything but problematic.

I understand that change is going to happen, and people are not always going to like it. My issue is that the administration seems to be deciding "what's best" before talking with the students, and then it goes ahead with those ideas regardless of students' input. Administrators give the illusion of listening to student opinions, but our opinions are obviously not important. Students express their opinions and ideas, and they've been doing so-but the administration is not listening. I worry that when I come back to Kenyon for my ten-year reunion, it will be a place of locked doors and closed minds.