Campus of Progressive Complacency

D

ear Principal Rawson,

As school settles into the normal grind, I’m sure you’re getting a feel for managing the Academy and setting priorities for yourself. In addition to contending with past events, including faculty sexual misconduct, I believe that you should make strengthening political discourse on campus a top priority.

This school is dominated by liberal progressives. You, as the most prominent and powerful individual on campus, must challenge that. I don’t mean that you should break up Democratic Club or burn Feminist Club sweaters. I mean that you must actively encourage serious consideration of dissenting opinions, so long as they are well-read and well-thought-out. This is not an invitation for stupid bigotry. It’s a move towards replacing the complacent progressive mood that pervades our campus with serious discussion.

Exeter is supposed to be a crucible for political thought: mashing together massively different—but still clearly articulated—views to approach the best personal politics. Unfortunately, Exeter’s political blast furnace is basically a refrigerator. Your job, Principal Rawson, is to restart the heat.

The typical Exeter progressive is not a bad person: focused firstly on getting good grades and maintaining their social life, their interest in politics extends exactly as far as Democratic Club wants to go.

Alone, they’re no problem at all. The problem comes in the lost opportunity of closed progressive minds. The Academy, among other college-style and college campuses, is unique in its combination of free time and diverse populations.

Radical organizations like the Students for a Democratic Society could only exist on college campuses since everyone else is tied down by academic rigor and other responsibilities. If Exeter progressives (along with other student and youth progressives) focused on important global issues, we might see a movement larger than SDS was at its height.

Unfortunately, this isn’t so. The largest action-oriented political group on campus is the Democratic Club, which as the name implies, works to elect Democrats. It’s a stretch to call Democrats “radical.” The second-largest group is the Young Democratic Socialist Exeter chapter, a fledgling leftist organization with only 150 members. There is no unifying organization for progressives to work through to promote their goals since no one is fighting for leftist issues. There is no hardcore, transparent political discourse, except in late-night and early-morning conversations with dorm-mates.

Principal Rawson, you must encourage a dialogue. Maybe it’ll be through a dedicated assembly, or just addressing the problem in an email. Whether it’s between the center-right and center-left or the center-left and the far-left, you must begin an explicitly political discussion on campus.

In one piece from The Exonian in 1978, you counseled Exonians to pick their political battles. Part of the article, titled “End to Radicals—Exeter Quiets Down” reads:

“Students who don't have to fear being drafted and shipped to Vietnam have less of a reason to protest. Similarly, since there is less evidence that the government is doing such things as bombing Laos while denying any such action, students have less inclination to respond cynically to national issues.” In your piece you warned that if students become too complacent, they may overlook important world issues.

How coincidental is it, 40 years later, that your words still hold true. Exeter’s progressive radicality has died on some strange hills, from spiting the administration over gun regulation and pushing half-heartedly for a vague divestment from unscrupulous investments. These few recent protests and rallies do not concern broader issues of class, race, equality and social justice—they concern relatively minor issues in the global scheme of things. We already are complacent, Mr. Rawson. Now we need you to help us out of this rut.

Best,

Jack