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a thought project? "lunch poems?"lunch lectures?
“Your mission in life is to be a good person, which you all already are … and to practice your sighting!”
A random professor says in a studio drawing room on the 4th floor of the music building that I’ve wandered to after wanting to explore my university a little more before this senior year ends. I’ve walked through a maze of halls, hearing imperfect renditions of something I would love if it weren’t being performed by students who are steadily learning to beat a drum and blow a horn. And above them, there’s a wall of studio sketched vases, all the same thing, so many different styles.
And all of this reminded me of the importance of keeping the ambiance of these buildings alive and forever remembered. The practice of music, the training in drawing, and the studying of such personal techniques should be what the university or education, in general, should be about. We’ve no place to honor the ability to learn for learning's sake, to be in wonder and given the authority to ponder that wonder. The spaces we choose to value and create become these small little reflections about what it is about the society that we love and create. I always imagine what the university could be like if it returned to or imagined anew, a place where we value the creation of art and treasured intellectual spirit.
Aimlessly wandering and embracing the moments of yourself that do not involve ideas of ‘knowing’ and the embrace of the unknown, the ignorant, elucidate our understanding of ourselves and the world. What is becoming increasingly apparent is that we haven’t created a world where we are allowed to err or be in err. To not sketch the way we wish, to blow the horn too sharply, we find ourselves in a space where these are noble practices and sights yet impractical of how we live our lives today.
What does the world look like with no objectives? Education was never removed from either particularly institutions or material relations of power. Freedom stripped of any social responsibility or vision isn’t freedom.
As I wrote this, the lights went off in the building, and my computer probably wasn’t connected to the internet…. the stories write themselves.. or they don’t?
What is the role of the University?
And what is its use during these times? It feels as if we’re attending the university (but not actually there) while the world is falling apart from around us? And to think about our political climate, where some of us have always known, and others are just now seeing, that our country is ridden with Neo-Nazis and white supremacist.
What is the role of the university here?
If not to liberate, then what is the point?
When considering the university as an institution from a student’s POV, we think of a high-stress, work-focused institution. In what may also be the ultimate case for the humanities, how do we ensure that the University doesn’t simply ‘create’ intellectual giants but also moral titans?
As there are many material things to change to ensure that the fabric of our lives isn’t torn, what is to be done about our moral responsibilities to each other, and who is to ensure that this happens?
YSU lives close to the prison, and critical thought should be given to that dichotomy. What does the university provide as a community, and what should it provide as an institution of abolition?
What does the university provide for us while Nazis storm the capitol and family die from a virus? How often, in every facet of our lives, do we allow for us to keep moving, living, surviving, as if this world will not crumble before us and we are left with nothing to blame but ourselves? We can perish by our hands and live by it as well. In many ways, the University still stands as a place of privilege, and I think it’s important to ask ourselves when we have seen America’s white supremacy become unveiled, how much longer can we continue to go on this road of ‘education’ while will ultimately inevitably lead us towards the same things we have been witnessing? We’ve seen a pandemic handled terribly by the United States, unchecked White Supremacy, and countless numbers of folks dying, and these institutions of higher learning bear what responsibility to all of this? Bear what responsibility to the people?
This is a reimagining, which I imagine can be very hard for people to grasp. Revolutionary changes need not be ideas or dreams, they are necessitated. I realize most of this was just a bunch of questions that I do not have the answers to, but I think the questions are an excellent place to start to ensure that we don’t get complacent in our lives, what we have lived through all this time was an everyday complacency of several failing institutions that we must address. It is not just the university, the inaccessibility of academia, or failing public schools across the nation; it’s not just education; it’s almost every existing industry here.