Blogs

“’Student voice,’ in its most profound and radical form, calls for a cultural shift that opens up spaces ad minds not only to the sound but also the presence and power of students.” –Cook-Sather 363

This quote resonates with me because back home, in Boston, much of my community organizing had to do with proving that young people are capable and impactful in their own education. Convincing adults was incredibly frustrating work. However, I kept with it because I agree, like Cook-Sather, that the true purpose of student voice should acknowledge and accept the power of students in and beyond education. When reading her article, I found it interesting that much of what she was describing—the positives/negatives of student voice, the power dynamic between young people and adults that calls for student voice—had not been coined with a term. Back home, much of what Cook-Sather describes is called, adultism, the act of discriminating against or undermining someone who is a young person because he/she is not yet an adult.

Dear Students,

Please post your excerpts in the comment section right below (within this forum). Thanks!

Thought you guys might find this interesting.

SourceURL:file://localhost/Users/naninevalen/Desktop/Ecology/Centered%20Across%20Time.doc

Late Spring, 1970 /Late Summer, 2012

What makes a place feel like a center of the campus?  Is it a physical center or an emotional or psychological center?  Is it a place where something happened?  Something good? Or a place that holds a disturbing memory of some kind? How, or where, can we approach our mind’s psychic centers and edges through the confines of physical space?

I was a sophomore at Bryn Mawr in 1970, 42 years ago. Yet now as I wander around, I discover I am drawn toward several places in particular – two are near the campus’s physical center.   Taylor’s high tower marks a center of campus.  All the “English” literature and most language classes were once held here.

It does not seem like there is a point in my day in which I go on a “proper” Thoreauvian walk; in fact, it does not seem that many places around me offer the possibility of walking without guided action.  It was thus hard to imagine a free-roaming meander, a saunter, a true meditative exploration on the outskirts of University City. After all, every step you took has you along another path that someone has created specifically to lead you to McDondalds or Chipotle or the UPenn Library; down Locust Walk, where it is almost permissible to saunter, bikes zoom past you while sorority girls and frat boys drunkenly bop shoulders and shrill like windchimes. Between destinations your head needs to be up and perceptive; they key in this sentence is the assurance that one must always have a destination while walking; an aimless amble could put you in danger and lead you into the wrong type of situation.    

Nature is a world onto itself, but like anything it is impossible to observe impartially. It always needs a lens through which to be seen, and on this clear September morning, that lens was me. I wish that I could say that I walked out of my dorm and was immediately struck by the beauty of the natural landscape; by the morning dew, and the robins with nest twigs, or the damp moss and the squishy mud. I did notice those things. Just not initially. I first had to learn to look for them. My first thoughts were along the lines of, “okay I’m outside walking. NOW what?” Then, as I strolled through Bryn Mawr’s campus, something interesting began to happen. I didn’t think so much about the natural world, nestled up against the old, man-made buildings, but I thought about my experiences in the place. I remembered deep conversations held in the grass outside of an archway, and sunny afternoons spent on a blanket getting sunburned. My experience of walking was more about my memories staged throughout the campus, rather than looking at the campus itself. However, the more I walked, the easier it got to simply be present in the moment and observe what was around me rather than jumping back into past experiences. I began to take note of the foliage and the stiff air and the chunks of quartz scattered on the ground.

Taking my time, scrolling through the many images that my classmates had posted, I found that I kept going back to the image that Jomaira posted. This image stuck with me, even while I looked through the others. When I look at the young girl, it feels like her silence is partially self-induced. Though she looks like the silence is taking a toll on her it seems as if she cannot do anything about it. She has lost control of her voice and of her freedom to speak.  But all at the same time, she is covering her mouth with her own hands. The power dynamic of control in this image can also be looked at through a different lense , it can also be a form of self-control; form that isn’t her primary option but one that she must choose.

When I think back and find moments in my life where I have felt silenced, it seems as though I took the option of silencing myself. They are times when I felt that my primary opinion on something would be too much or just excessive. When location comes into these moments, they are all connected to being home. When I am at Bryn Mawr, I feel like my opinion will always be listened to, even if my listener does not agree with me. This is a community where I have learned to not let myself feel silenced because my peers have learned to listen to new opinions and take them in and instead of ignore them. 

            As I was about to begin my Thoreauvian walk around the Bryn Mawr campus, I considered briefly examining a map of the campus so I could get a better sense of where my walk might take me. But as I considered whether or not to do so, I thought back to how Thoreau described the Saunterers of the Middle Ages. Thoreau describes the Saunterers as wanderers whose intentions were to reach the Holy Land but were not bound to the final goal of reaching the Holy Land and rove and idly take their time in doing so. Unlike, the Saunterers I was not trying to get to one particular destination but like them I was perfectly content with wandering, soaking in the campus landscape and taking my time in doing so. Examining a map, I concluded, would conflict with the point of this walk because doing so would give a set idea of what I could expect on this walk of campus, rather than letting my own sauntering and exploration give me a sense of what the Bryn Mawr campus had to offer me. As a Haverford student, with the exceptions of the dining halls, and the locations of various classes and events I attended, I wasn’t as familiar with the campus as a Bryn Mawr student or faculty member who knew exactly what the campus had to offer.  But because I had little knowledge of the campus, I had what Thoreau described as “useful ignorance”, in the sense that because I had no extensive knowledge of the majority of the campus and thus everything that I came across would seem new and fresh.