In Miner Hall, there are diabolical plans being hatched yet again.
For the last 40-plus years, in that little office to the left, a college has fermented revolutionary ideas that have brought Tufts students, faculty and staff together. The Experimental College has been working to change this hallowed Hill with its dangerous ethos of a holistic and interdisciplinary education that encompasses all of campus life. Perhaps, after more than four decades, it is time to stop thinking of it as such an experimental concept.
In Tuesday's Daily article, "Community-building found to be difficult by faculty, administration," the author sketched a detailed portrait of what prevents increased out-of-office-hours contact between students and faculty. In it, she painted a bleak outlook because of logistical and professional issues that ensnared any major initiatives to build a bridge between students and
faculty. Glaringly omitted from her analysis was the ExCollege's annual event that hopes to contribute to the student-faculty conversation on campus.
For the last 17 years, the ExCollege's "Opening Up the Classroom," has been providing a forum for members of the community to coalesce and converse about issues central to the university they inhabit. The event centers on a topic that affects life at Tufts in a profound way, one that will get students, faculty and staff riled up enough to engage with the topic and with each other.
This thematic approach is what makes the event's dynamic separate from the smaller community-minded initiatives the university has created. While the Spirit Fund and free coffee in the Tower Caf?© are lovely programs that support student-faculty dialogue, students and faculty sparingly use them. When those interactions take place, they are somewhat shackled by a conversation regimen of small talk and course talk.
In contrast, the ExCollege's event employs the tactic of anchoring the interaction to a third-party topic. By providing the conversation topic to students (who are afraid of that dreaded silence mislabeled as "awkward") and faculty (who, according to the Daily article, may be afraid of crossing some type of ethical or professional line), the event helps to equally engage all participants in the dialogue.
And this egalitarian philosophy mines the redeeming potential of the student-faculty interaction. By removing students and faculty from discussions of a course's subject matter, it allows both parties to exist outside traditional educational power dynamics. Even when chatting with a professor during office hours, the teacher-student roles govern the meeting, because the student is there to absorb information from the professor, rarely the other way around. This power dynamic looms even when removing the interaction from the office. When academic issues arise, the professor is in the role of the mentor, and the student a diligent mentee.
But a topic that affects all of Tufts campus - the students, the faculty and the administration - has the ability to engage and challenge the Tufts community as partners. Professors cannot be expected to know how Tufts' rising reputation as a "New Ivy" alters students' impressions of Tufts. Students cannot be expected to understand how Tufts' standing in the higher education industry impacts the administration's hiring practices. And the administration cannot be expected to always have a thumb on the pulse of a growing and changing faculty and their thoughts on tenure at Tufts compared to other universities. Yet each party has the capability of educating another about their viewpoints on these very issues.
And Tufts, at its core, is an educational institution. This is often forgotten on such an over-programmed campus. But the students who walk across the academic quad all day and sit hunched over Tisch cubicles at night are here to learn. The faculty who swivel in their office chairs, fielding queries from overworked students, are here to educate and be educated. The administration who sits in Dowling and various buildings across this campus exist to facilitate and create an educational environment.
"Opening Up the Classroom" aims to facilitate the very education Tufts aims to provide. It just happens to take place outside of the lecture hall. How experimental.
Chadwick Matlin is a senior and member of the Experimental College board. "Opening Up the Classroom" will be held on Nov. 15 at 5:30 p.m.
