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September 20, 2005
Editorial: There is no community without students
Last Tuesday, classes and activities were canceled. Throughout the university, faculty and staff joined together to celebrate and enrich the community of this fair institution with a convocation.
We would like to congratulate President Linda Hanson on initiating this new tradition. According to Jen
Thorson, Associate Vice President of Marketing and Communications, the event was the first of its kind, where faculty, staff, administrators and Board of Trustee members gathered in one place.
This gathering was not just with members of the CLA. Faculty from the School of Law, the Graduate Schools of Education, and the Graduate School of Public Administration, along with our other graduate programs, were present.
Each table represented staff from multiple areas. Librarians sat with law professors, CLA faculty with graduate faculty.
However, one important element of Hamline was left out: the students.
We, with 1,800 souls in the CLA alone are a part of this community. We deserved to hear the president’s charge, to hear how important “transparency” is, how important it is to disseminate information.
Furthermore, the event was ill-timed. Classes which meet once a week, such as Professor Jeanne
Kosieradzki’s Torts and Compensation, were pushed back. Their first planned class will Sept. 20, take place nearly two weeks after classes began.
A suggestion: Next year, invite us. Similar to matriculation, where the incoming class congregates on Old
Main Mall and is “charged,” take the entire student population and set us up on the new Klas Field. Sit us down at tables over cookies and lemon-water. Separate students from their areas of study. Better yet, put a staff member, a professor, an administrator, a law student, a graduate student and a CLA undergraduate student all at the same table. Let us help build our community.
Then challenge us. Parade engaging speakers to the podium, and make statements like Professor Mike Reynolds’s “The hell with civility” that inherently perk our ears.
You can send the invitations to our various mailboxes. Next fall, we’ll be waiting.
Editors note: The Oracle Online, our web edition, is once again available. The Oracle Online is at www.hamline.edu/oracle.
Posted by msveum at September 20, 2005 12:46 PM
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