It’s a beautiful Saturday morning here in one of the blander corners of New England. The sun is shining, we can finally see the grass again, Babson’s trees are looking fantastic, and I once again stumble into a community Go-Bike left outside leaning against a bike rack. My instinct, as the neighborhood bicycle hall-monitor, is to send a somewhat snarky email to one of my favorite list servs – once again not quite screaming, but recommending – into the void that is your collective Outlook inboxes. I mount the bicycle, point it towards East Hall, and start cruising. Wind blowing through my hair, I’m once again reminded how nice it is to ride a bike. When I return to my room though, my email-writing zeal is not where I left it. Instead, I’m left feeling something closer to reflection. The gist of which, as obvious as it may seem, is as follows: you don’t get anything for returning the bikes. Smug satisfaction is not a reward, nor is negotiating the often cluttered bike/ball room. And further, no one is going to get punished for not doing it; I’m not going to use my awesome detective skills to track you down and honor board you or otherwise scold your inaction.
As much as I would like to make this all about bikes, the issue at hand has nothing to do with them. How often do you think about how lucky we are to be here? Or more precisely, how astounding it is that we have as much latitude as we do? Take issue with admin all you want, I kvetch my heart out too, but don’t lose sight of how much faith and trust is endowed in us as a student body. 24-hour access to 3D printers, liquid nitrogen, a materials science lab, beautiful study spaces, a pool room, professional audio equipment, cameras, bikes, you name it. All with limited or zero oversight or restrictions. This is not inclusive of all the non-24-hour things we are trusted to use responsibly, and is certainly not an exhaustive list. The key word being: trusted. At the same time, it feels that year-over-year, this sense of community responsibility is eroded bit by bit. This is not the least bit speculative. For the second consecutive academic year, the shop has issued a lengthy email imploring more responsible use of the 3D printers. A trackable increase in emails sent by our wonderful library team points to a growingly ungovernable, irresponsible student body.
Most recently, it took the threat of an honor boarding for a lounge couch in East Hall to be returned. I won’t bore you with the numbers on missing bikes again. It’s easy to run this through the typical modern-times Olin student framework of redirecting the blame towards administration, which avoids the simpler explanation: that simply students lack respect for our communal resources. Nobody knows how to just ‘chill out’ anymore. Or perhaps we just can’t continue justifying paying for missing materials that would have been a blissful write-off in the “good old days” none of us personally experienced. In reality, though, it’s hard to deny that we have a role to play in all of this. It’s not in any way inconceivable that some of these open doors we all gleefully tell prospective students about will be under lock and key by the time we graduate.
Trust is not something we are inherently endowed or owed. I am well aware that sincerity is uncool, and that what I am about to say is somehow even less cool than that, but do you remember that document we all signed during orientation? As jaded as you might feel, I would suggest that it does, at some level, mean something.
