3-5-09: Reflecting on Tuesday's intellectual life forum

Posted March 5, 2009
1:55 p.m.If you've been reading The DePauw anything close to regularly this year, you've grown accustomed to the term "intellectual life." As an editor, I've kind of grown to resent the term, because it's one of those phrases that seemingly doesn't mean anything, sucking all the excitement out of what really is a huge issue for the University.

When President Casey and faculty members talk about "intellectual life," they're really talking about making fundamental changes to some of the signature features of a DePauw education: Winter Term, the Programs of Distinction, graduation requirements, etc.

Casey had said earlier this semester that he wanted to see concrete proposals on all these issues by the May faculty meeting; now it seems the University is hedging its bets by talking about forming a "summer working group" to hammer out the ideas after the semester ends. Regardless of when the changes come, the intellectual life discussion is probably going to lead to a completely different experience for future DePauw students than what I have seen in my four years here.

On the one hand, students know that this initiative is going on, and most don't hesitate to tell you their opinions on whether or not Winter Term should be graded, or if the six class requirement groups make sense. On the other hand, it's seemed to me like few students had any idea how they could join the University's conversation rather than just share their views among themselves. While interviewing Casey for the newspaper toward the start of the spring semester, he and I hit upon a pretty simple idea: Why not hold a forum to tell students exactly how to join the intellectual life initiative?
Over the course of about a month, this forum came together pretty much by itself. The essential panel lineup, in my view, would be Casey, Student Body President Matt Jennings, and Chair of Faculty Dave Berque, the professor who's been most involved in coordinating the initiative. Casey asked Jennings and Berque to participate, and all of them had Tuesday, March 3 open on their schedules. I wanted help moderating the panel, so Kali Geldis, last semester's editor in chief, readily agreed to participate. I had dreams of filling Kresge or Meharry Hall, but the president's office more sensibly proposed the UB Ballroom, and that was pretty much the end of the planning.

Advertising the event involved 70 red posters hung up around campus and full-page advertisements in the paper in the week leading up to Tuesday. I had no idea how effective this would be. I could see 10 people showing up to the forum, or entire greek chapters pouring in together.

I'm happy to say that Tuesday's forum went really well. The ballroom was pretty much full. Students came with good questions and left with concrete knowledge on how to share their ideas with faculty. We ran over our advertised event length of one hour, but very few students left - and anyone who's gone to a speaker or panel event on campus knows how rare that is.

If you're reading this post but didn't attend the event Tuesday, let me summarize here what you can do to let the faculty know what you think on any of the five intellectual life issues on the table right now. Any group of at least three University community members (mix and match students, professors, staff) can submit a proposal, two pages at the longest, about one issue, a few of them or all of them. The laundry list of issues is Winter Term, graduation requirements, first-year experience, internships and the Programs of Distinction. Groups must e-mail their proposals to Dave Berque (dberque@depauw.edu) by March 11.

As a senior Media Fellow, I've already been talking with some friends about sending in a proposal on when students should be admitted to the Programs of Distinction. If you've got an idea about any of the intellectual life issues, talk with your friends and professors, and make your opinions known! This might be the best chance students get to reshape DePauw for years to come; it would be a shame if we don't take advantage of it.