One Small Voice

There is a children's story that many of us heard when we were young whose message I believe gets lost in familiarity. I would like to revisit this story in the light of recent developments here on campus.

We all remember the story of the Dutch boy who upon seeing the trickle of water leaking from the dyke ran over to it and stuck his finger in the hole, staying there all night until someone came and got him in the morning.

Now, the Dutch see this as an important story because as it states on a commemorative statue, it represents their constant struggles against the waters as much of Holland's land is taken from the sea with only the dykes there to keep the ocean from reclaiming it. I choose to see this as a very visceral allegory of the potentially overwhelming power that a problem, which starts out small, can eventually wreak.

The trickle of water through the dyke is like the small concessions that we make every day or allow to go unnoticed because, well, it's only a small trickle and our dyke is a mighty structure that has been there forever. We believe that our institutions and the things we value will not ultimately corrode or be inundated by these seemingly small allowances because these small decisions will have no ultimate or lasting hold over anything of importance.

The removal of the Kinsey Confidential from the newspaper and smaller ordinances (i.e. no wearing 'scary' Halloween costumes by the Greek gods and goddesses on the Halloween dress up day) are both examples.

Independently they seem like small changes or changes that we should not take too seriously or waste time writing opinion columns about, but collectively they represent a serious schism between the ideals of the community and the ideals of the administration who are meant to be the vanguards of our educational interests.

I will remind you of the lesson of the Dutch boy. He knew and understood that the small trickle would eventually lead to a bigger hole and that bigger hole would lead to a weakness of the whole dyke and eventually the whole town and countryside is underwater.

While I don't claim to be the boy with his finger in the dam, I wouldn't even know how to do that nor would I have the fortitude to stand their all night in the cold, but I am pointing to the trickle and yelling for help.

I understand that change is necessary and that it is undeniable but what I am asking for is accountability.

When unilateral decisions are made for the "good of the community," and the community itself is not consulted or even taken into consideration, problems arise. In any healthy relationship, 'communication is key' and in this relationship the students feel impotent in their power to affect change. We are communicating with no one and I feel that our concerns are echoing in empty space.

Texas Lutheran is a liberal arts university and as such should foster an environment in which the spirit of collaboration and academia is upheld. Education, if it is rightly ordered, should be a haven for reason; free of the flippant haste that rules other institutions.

The administration should trust its student body to use the reason it is being taught and the student body should use its reason accordingly. The decisions of our university should represent much more than the strong will of one.

As a wise man once said, "If something is worth saying, it is worth saying twice," so I once more plead for help in my attempt to understand the direction that my university, soon to be my Alma Matter, is going.