By Evan Le’Mon (Whetstone Staff Writer)

A professor once told me something that has stuck with me. One of the administrators had been getting on his case about speaking more “politely” toward students, as it would reflect badly on the school.

“They’re our customers, after all,” the professor was told.

I couldn’t believe my ears.

To me, this one sentence explained a lot about how Wesley College is run behind closed doors. It was telling of at least some administrators’ attitudes toward students. Some think of us as sheep or cattle, to be herded in and through a four-year (if we’re lucky) assembly line, at the end of which we’re handed a slip of paper and required to start paying off piles of debt. We’re seen by some only for the potential depth of our pockets.

This is not what I came here for.

When I got to Wesley, I had no idea what to expect. I had a few friends from high school that had come here with me, and I’d been recruited for track, so I didn’t expect to completely float by during my four years here. However, I didn’t expect to form as strong of an attachment to the school as I have in my two years here. From trying my hand as president of Black Student Union, to the high of modeling onstage and the fulfilling rush of writing a well-investigated story for the school newspaper, the student organizations here have ensured that I got the full “college experience.”

That’s what college is supposed to be.

College should be more than the monotonous, droning grade-grubbing that we drudged through in high school. Why would we pay for four more years of that?

College should be more than shoveling information into our heads all week and drinking all weekend.

We should leave here with more than a piece of paper saying we deserve a good job to diminish the Everest of debt we’ve acquired over four years.

Aren’t we in college to grow as people? Isn’t this place supposed to expand our minds beyond our preconceived limitations? Aren’t we here for the new experiences that will jump-start our transcendence into adulthood?

How are we supposed to have these experiences if some of the people running this school don’t care whether we have them or not?

I think that keeping the student organizations independent and under our control is essential to this cause. Who knows what the students want better than the students themselves? How else can we ensure that our voice will matter on this campus? How else will we be able to leave our mark on Wesley College?

That’s what it’s all about – leaving your mark. In high school, we were just trying to get out. Now that we’re in college, we want to do something meaningful. Besides, if some administrators insist on treating us as customers, isn’t the customer always right?