Last year’s Student Comission president, Alex Morgan K’11, will tell you that when he first arrived on campus he didn’t have presidential aspirations. “Actually, When I came to college I said that I didn’t want to be a part of any organization, I was here to study, and that was what I was going to do.”
But as his path through K will tell you, and most people who know Morgan will agree, this man was on a mission. A week after entering the school he had decided to run for office and soon there after knew that leadership was in his future.
After holding a number of roles with Student Commission throughout his four years, Morgan’s senior-year presidency “became much more about what was going on around campus than it had been in those other years.” So behind Morgan’s leadership, Student Commission squared its shoulders at enacting some positive change on campus.
Generating momentum around changes on campus is a personal specialty of one of Morgan’s fellow commissioners last year, Leeor Schweitzer, K’11. Schweitzer’s unrest with campus policies began in his first week on campus. After finding inconsistencies in the policies surrounding hookah use on campus during orientation week Schweitzer asserted himself early and met with Associate Dean of Students, Dana Jansma, during the first week of classes.
Despite the “legacy” that being openly opposed to the hookah policy for four years has left on K-College administrators, the policy has not changed and Leeor says “I still think the policy we have is ridiculous. The Dean of Students has agreed with me that it’s inconsistent and is still not willing to change it.”
So what legacy has the administration left on Schweitzer?: the realization that students and administrations are almost naturally antagonistic to each other. “I used to think that we (at K) were special in that we have this antagonistic relationship with the administration” but, he explained, after reflection and discussions with friends from other schools he began to realized how natural this antagonism is.
For both Morgan and Schweitzer antagonism from the administration looks very similar whether its the hookah policy, the good samaritan policy, or admission policies to campus events - ignore and delay. According to Schweitzer, the common threads from campaign to campaign were “extreme delaying tactics, ignoring e-mails, ignoring conversations, constantly going back on promises that were made in terms of time-lines, and pretending that conversations that had happened hadn’t happened.”
A perfect example of this is the Good Samaritan policy, a campaign that Schweitzer worked on as a member of Students for a Sensible Drug Policy (SSDP.) Although this campaign was after several policy reforms, the one agreed to by the administration was amnesty for students seeking medical help for friends whether they are intoxicated or not.
The hope was for this change to be enacted into the rule book. After an initial promise of six months, the change actually occurred after a drawn out two-years and the change wasn’t exactly what they were looking for. What they got was a note at the bottom of the alchohol policy explaining that students acting in the best interest of fellow students will “in most cases... be exempt from disciplinary action.”
According the Morgan, administrators such as Dean of Students, Sarah Westfall, and College President, Eileen Wilson-Oyelaran, often sited the behavior of Student Commission as producing breakdowns in dialogue. With the commotion surrounding event policies during last year’s Monte Carlo event as his example Morgan defended his actions.
Event policies such as the right to search students, zero-tolerance for intoxication even for students of-age, and no re-entry were on the agenda for student commission with Monte Carlo approaching. So at one of Student Commission’s regularly meetings with president Wilson-Oyelaran, Dean Westfall, and others, Morgan brought up his concerns. He was promptly met with a refusal to talk about the policies and the blanket response that the policies “‘would not be changed in time for Monte Carlo’ and the discussion couldn’t go anywhere,” Morgan explained.
The response was fierce. First came a resolution to survey the student body which showed a majority of the student body disagreed with the policies being discussed. A campaign ensued which included posters with student comments, a sit-in by Schweitzer, a call to the Gazette, a reach for faculty and staff support, and a walkout at Monte Carlo.
The reaction from the administration wasn’t particularly positive. Morgan explained that “when the Dean of Students, in a meeting, says that she has lost respect for you and that she thinks you more of a partisan advocate and less of a leader, that’s around the time when I have lost respect for you and we’re done working.”
After another round of ignore and delay, a re-entry policy was approved just shortly before crystal ball. The most disappointing part of it all for both Morgan and Schweitzer was that it distracted them from other agenda points that were more meaningful. Specifically, reform surrounding the housing system.
Here lies a characterization of both of these dedicated students, the drive to accomplish more. Despite there frustrations their work has done great things around campus. Student engagement surrounding these issues has continued to increase as a result of the organization, passion, and devotion to the issues they work on. There are two things that Kalamazoo College students who were touched by Morgan and Schweitzer’s work can surely agree on. One, there is little that can stand in the way of bright futures of both these gentlemen. Two, they will be sorely missed.
