Well, a reasonably large number of people showed up for the February 17th meeting of the Task Force on the Learning Environment, which ended up being held in the Fuller Auditorium. One of the members of the task force estimated about 400 students were present. As large a number as that may be, the fact remains that there were empty seats in the room. Still, getting about 20% of the student body to show up for the meeting was an impressive achievement, and the vast majority of those present were most likely strong supporters of the plan to construct a student center. However, there were also a few people present that seemed to be interested only in ridiculing the proceedings. I was a bit disappointed by some aspects of the meeting myself, but I can at least respect the commitment to the students that was displayed by the task force.
After lengthy and thunderous applause for the individual members of the group, the meeting finally turned to the subject of the campus center. All present were praised for showing their support of the center by showing up to the meeting, which resulted in yet more applause. I began to wonder if anyone would get a chance to talk about the campus center, or if we would simply applaud for the entire meeting. If the latter turned out to be the case, I was going to have to leave early, lest I be permanently deafened by the screaming maniacs behind me who seemed interested only in being heard over everyone else in the room.
The task force pointed out that the campus center had not yet been constructed because the students had failed to show sufficient interest in such a project. Following that, a few other scattered remarks were made regarding how important it was that we continue to show our support for the project. Eventually the meeting was opened up for questions, which basically meant it was now time for a few members of the audience to posture for a while and make impassioned and well rehearsed speeches in favor of a center that they felt should have been constructed years ago. A few actual questions were also asked, which the task force attempted to answer.
One member of the audience asked what students could do to continue to show their support for the center. The crowd was told to demonstrate their support by writing letters to Newspeak, and perform other such public expressions of opinion. There was some scattered grumbling in response to this suggestion. Apparently a few members of the audience felt that this was not enough. I'm not sure what these people had in mind, but they probably wouldn't have invested the effort necessary anyway, since they couldn't be bothered to add anything constructive to the meeting, and instead limited their contribution to making snide remarks about members of the task force. In fact, the general level of immaturity demonstrated by some members of the crowd was appalling. The aforementioned people seated behind me seemed to lose interest in the meeting once the shouting and applause were over, and settled back for 45 minutes of making rude noises.
I'm one of the people who thinks this campus could really use a student center, but I'm not sure what the meeting on Monday really accomplished. All it did for me was remind me that we can't get the student population of this school to unite on any issue, that the general level of apathy on campus is horrifyingly high, and that there are people on campus with whom I wouldn't want to hang out, even in a nice new campus center. I just hope that showing up really did achieve something, and that the thoughtless and immature members of the supporters that are only interested in getting an on-campus bar don't ruin our chances. Here's hoping we really did make a difference...and that it's for the better.