Linfield community fractured, needs help

Review Editorial Board

Tensions are rising here at Linfield – we’re in a budget crunch, enrollment is down, the price of higher education is rising – but this is exactly the time we need to band together in solidarity, not create meaningless divisions that will only serve to weaken us.

We like to talk about the “Linfield Community” but this is pointless and hypocritical unless every student, faculty member, staff member, and administrator feels valued.

The “power of a small college” means nothing if all the people who create the “small college” are treated as commodities. We are interconnected; if one of us fails, we all feel it.

How often have we been in classes where the professor has to call someone to fix a computer or make the speakers work?

The professors couldn’t operate without the staff, Linfield wouldn’t be a college without its professors so the staff wouldn’t have a job without them, administrators would have nothing to administrate, and students couldn’t get through college without all of these people.

To borrow a slogan, we are indeed “Stronger Together.”

Divisions between these groups are only distractions and roadblocks in the way of creating a vibrant school community. Ultimately, students come to Linfield for the experience, if the people who create that experience are at loggerheads instead of working in harmony, what do we have to offer future students?

If one group has to make a sacrifice for the good of the other, they shouldn’t hesitate to do so because without one or the other, we wouldn’t be able to function. Give a little, get a little.

Morale is low but it’ll never improve if this unhealthy competitiveness that has become a part of higher education isn’t nipped in the bud.

There are only benefits to building each other up and working as an integrated unit, where each person can contribute their unique skills for the betterment of the group as a whole.

We learn cooperation in kindergarten. Perhaps we could take a cue from our childhood selves and put aside our egos to make Linfield a place where students, faculty, staff and the administration feel they are respected and can do their best work.

-The Review Editorial Board