Letter: What will we do with our fear?
Kim McLarin is a writing, literature, and publishing associate professor and a graduate program director.
Dear Emerson Community,
These are frightening times. We fear for ourselves, our families and friends, our students and staff and colleagues, the College itself. We fear for our country and planet. This fear is human and, given the circumstances, which need not be here reiterated, also quite sensible.
The only question is: What will we do with our fear?
We can follow the plunging path of too much of our nation and attack one another. We can assume bad faith from the other side and tumble into self-righteousness. We can point fingers and level accusations, wounding with our anger. In doing so, we may fail to interrogate our own emotions and reactions. We can try to blow the whole darn thing apart.
Or, we can try something else…
We can try something radical, something at odds with the current political and social climate. We can try community. We can assume good faith, even in the heated furnace of disagreement. We can state our positions firmly and clearly but without animosity. We can work collaboratively, exploring the opportunity for new pedagogies, and build a model for 21st century higher education for ourselves and our students.
Emerson is a small college in a small city in a small state in, despite appearances, a very small section of the planet Earth. If we can’t figure out a way to navigate these treacherous waters here, together, is there any hope anywhere?
As artists, scholars and communication experts, we can lead the way. All we have to do is try.
As James Baldwin taught us:
“The precise role of the artist, then, is to illuminate that darkness, blaze roads through that vast forest, so that we will not, in all our doing, lose sight of its purpose, which is, after all, to make the world a more human dwelling place.”
If you would like to submit a letter to the editor, email [email protected]. Letters may be edited for style and clarity.
Professor / Aug 8, 2020 at 11:57 pm
Whether this or any other crisis (and one always comes), many, many faculty members predicted it. Some of us openly talked about it for years now. This particular crisis is all of the administrators’ doing and caused by years of financial mismanagement, incompetence, and greed.
Shujen Wang / Aug 5, 2020 at 11:46 am
FYI I will be teaching both in person and online in the fall.
Shujen Wang / Aug 5, 2020 at 11:41 am
It is unfortunate that there is no workable solution to this crisis we are facing: going fully online would most likely mean job losses and even program cuts, going in-person, even hybrid, might mean outbreaks. The fact remains: Covid is a crisis that is not of any of the administrators’ doing and we are in it together. Emerson is not perfect, and hindsight is 20/20. The administrators are trying their best to solve this unsolvable problem. We love our students, otherwise we would not be here. Please let us work together.
Professor / Aug 4, 2020 at 10:38 pm
Sycophantic platitudes pay off for Maria, and Co.
Anonymous / Aug 3, 2020 at 8:22 pm
Easy for Maria Koundoura to say.
She is teaching all of her classes remotely.
A concerned faculty member / Aug 1, 2020 at 10:58 pm
James Baldwin also wrote: “The role of the artist is exactly the same as the role of the lover. If I love you, I have to make you conscious of the things you don’t see.”
Get along and be happy is a nice slogan. But be real and not oblivious to the danger administrators are putting faculty and students in. The only reason faculty have been vocal about Flex One is because it’s a cluster—k plan that faculty found out about after it was a fait accompli.
Faculty / Jul 31, 2020 at 11:25 am
I completely agree that we should “build a model for 21st century higher education for ourselves and our students” – one that doesn’t include huge income disparities between the ruling class (president and vice presidents) and faculty (8ook per year vs 5k per class). Preferably a model that puts human lives and health, faculty, staff, students, and their families, ahead of self-interest and greed of the administration. We should build a model that doesn’t’ involve taking on irresponsible and unsustainable debt for self-aggrandizement and executive resume building. We should try a model in which faculty have equal say on a variety of ‘brilliant’ financial strategies like Malboro merger, for example, which was supposed to bring 40 mln and now will not even cover the salaries of the new professors we are getting. We should consider a new model in which the College has ethics and conflict of interest policies so the President’s friends and family are not given cushy, and unnecessary jobs. We should build a model in which we are stewards of our students’ finances and lower our tuition rather than leaving them in debt in order to finance useless buildings and puffed up administration. We should build a model in which we are not blackmailed into relinquishing our labor rights and our civil rights, sacrificing our lives on the phony premise of ‘Emerson family.’ We should build a model in which executives are held accountable for their failures, incompetence and mismanagement. Can you imagine such a 21st-century model?
Maria Koundoura / Jul 30, 2020 at 6:59 pm
Thank you, Kim, for a wise, passionate, and inclusive call for all of us to work together and focus on unity and offering our best to each other in all areas of our community.