[Alumni-chat] A short rant/reflection

[Rowan (rowankaiser at gmail.com)]

>It is good to laugh at ourselves, but I also think that reflection is
>important even when in crisis. I think Antiochians have been in crisis mode
>so long that it is the only context in which we truly function.  No need to
>reflect.  Plenty has gotten normalized as part of an educational experience,
>that is actually not very conducive to education, health or sustainability.
I wonder why you think we're lacking in reflection. To take a personal anecdote, when I was on-campus this weekend, I went back to the Record office to see if I could dig up some of the archives from my term as editor, Spring '03. Now that was a crisis term. The start of the Iraq War, a crushing winter, the annual depreciation-induced budget crisis, and, specifically, one of those identity politics-based crises that would spring up every now and then dominating the discourse.

But what were these identity politics if not an excess of reflection? The personal reflection of guilt and privilege, and trying to demand that others reflect on the same things. The crisis becomes one of reflection - "Why hasn't the community been reflective enough in the past and tried to fix its errors?"

So I wonder what your distinctions between reflection and crisis really mean. I suspect there's a much more complex interplay between the two than that false dichotomy would imply.

And what do you think we should reflect upon?


In the last Record of that term, one of the CMs and I both had opinion pieces about the breakdown in "community." They were 100% reflection. And they were bitter and highly critical of process and people. They implied the need for a complete disengagement with many community traditions. Perhaps valid, of course, but perhaps not. Either way, they gave the appearance of some grumpy old curmudgeons more than people trying to fix the problems of the community.

Be careful what kind of reflection you wish more. Crisis mode brings out the best in us, I think, unless you believe our senior projects were completed weeks before they were due......