We are not in love with Pomona College. Being told that we would love Pomona when we got here was not enough for us. We have remained awake since then. Perhaps we’re greedy, but sun and flip-flops and small class sizes and FOAM and Smiley ‘80s and the number forty-seven are not enough for us either. We want more people to be awake like we are. We’re tired of people telling us that we are being taught how to think here, because we realize that we are not. We are tired of self-satisfied students and secure professors, and we wonder what everybody is smiling about all the time. Call us callous, but we’re not that interested in the dismissed dining hall workers anymore. You will never see any of us at a Masturbation Celebration.
We applaud sober sex. We identify with Winston Smith. We are irreverent, but we slipped past the guards at the gates somehow. We like the two possible meanings of our shortened name: The PC Dissent. We think that there could maybe be a professor here who is not in fact a genius – that there is just the slimmest chance of it. We think that Oxtoby doesn’t do enough for us; we suspect that he (or “it” if we’re right) is an automaton. We are not ardent proponents of composting; we won’t be upset with you if we see you neglecting to compost. We believe there are events in the world that are more fun than Pub. We believe there are things in the world more important and more telling than grades. So don’t expect to impress us with your GPA.
We remember fondly periods in our lives when ideas were real to us, at certain times exciting, at others cause for despair, but, most importantly, at each moment real, and we would like to multiply those instances, no matter the peril. We remember with distaste instances when classes and professors and fellow students have sucked the life out of ideas, and we would like to keep that from happening in the future. We want to resuscitate the dead ideas too.
We want students here to be more thoughtful. We won’t say intellectual, because we worry that people will associate intellectual with pretentious, and we are not pretentious. We merely want genuine thought to go on – the kind of thought that affects how we see ourselves and how we see the world. Simple.
Please don’t just stand up and indignantly declare that you too are thoughtful, for we haven’t found strong evidence (not even circumstantial) to support your assertion. If the typical Pomona College student is thoughtful, and her scholarship worthy of attention, then the typical hipster has serious existential issues, and those Urban Outfitters books he stocks his shelves with are the new Western canon. Please show us some sign of life: talk, as they say, is cheap. Like our favorite philosopher of education, we say that conflict is the gadfly of thought, and we are happy to let loose a drove (a hive? a swarm?) of gadflies – we are happy to let loose gadflies. We add in the principle-aphorism that a placid lake contains no fish. We encourage discord. We encourage anger. We will be handing out medals to anyone who challenges a professor. We have an award waiting for the person who can convince us that we are wrong about Pomona.
Though we appreciate what the TSL is trying to do for us, we think they’re kind of a joke. Dear TSL, We don’t like the way you run your newspaper. We don’t like the pieces you print in your opinions section – those second-rate imitations of articles in big city papers – that, if not imposturous, are passionately narcissistic, obliviously self-involved, in every respect the work of the residents of a bubble – and still, of course, second-rate. When we say that you all do an excellent job of acting out the role of liberal arts campus junior journalists, sprinting from your “offices” to the Smith Campus Center to cover the latest non-event, where you feverishly scribble down the words of a burned-out academician, and first out the door and back to Walker in order to meet your “deadline,” we are not complimenting you. (You play the part with such seriousness! How?) Well, anyway, we don’t really expect you to understand us: if you were capable of understanding, you just wouldn’t be you. And, though we would never admit this to anyone but you, we half-appreciate that you contrast our genuine editorial integrity with your failed efforts to emulate The New York Times. Sincerely, The Dissent.
We have a lot more to say – our words and thoughts have been stored away for a while – but we will cut ourselves off here for now. However, we would first like to promise you that we will not say anything unless we mean it. We welcome contributors, but you have to promise us first that you won’t write anything unless you mean it. Oh, and we are sorry if this has upset you. But you must understand that there is this certain routine we have fallen into with you in the past (call it tolerance), and it hasn’t yet failed to disappoint us. We will be up all night thinking excitedly about things, and when we come downstairs in the morning to tell you about them, we inevitably discover that you have overslept: so we whisper your name in your ear; we tap you hesitantly on the shoulder; we open the blinds a crack, and then we throw them open – you just roll over and grumble. Concerned, we whisper again and tap you once more – same results. A more radical approach, we have determined, is necessary. It is not our fault but yours that you are now being shaken.
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