Dear Wheaton,
It is not often that a campus newspaper finds itself remixed into anonymous manifestos. Whether through impromptu conversations in the library or anonymous posters circulating across campus—namely “We deserve the truth” and “Speak up before you write your department’s eulogy”—this past week marked a revival of campus dialogue.
When I first noticed the “Speak up before you write your department’s eulogy” poster, I turned to share it with the person sitting beside me, who happened to be an underclassman with little direct connection to the humanities. He immediately scanned the QR code and began responding at length. The moment felt significant. It was heartening to witness students genuinely care—to advocate for something grounded in principle rather than direct personal benefit.
The first stretch of genuine spring weather tends to catalyze a renewed sense of community each year. This past Friday, students flocked to the Dimple in the afternoon, lingering for The Big Event and Café con Leche. The resurgence in campus energy and event attendance has been particularly noticeable following a relatively lackluster stretch earlier in the semester, beginning with SHAG’s Sex Trivia Night on April 2. Even the newsstands tell a story: emptier racks in the Library, Balfour, and the Discovery Center suggest that more people are engaging.
Yet the resurgence in campus dialogue and engagement feels fragile.
Colleges are uniquely vulnerable to historical amnesia. Every four years, the student body turns over almost entirely. What one class experiences, debates, and defends can disappear almost overnight. Administrations remain; students rotate through. Institutional memory, as a result, becomes uneven—and often ephemeral.
As someone preparing to graduate, I find it increasingly difficult to reconcile the Wheaton I entered with the one I am preparing to leave. And yet, without a shared memory of what once was, it becomes difficult to even name what has changed.
Recently, while digging through The Wheaton Wire’s archives, I came across coverage from 2012 of a proposed residential pricing policy that was ultimately halted after student outcry. Then–Wheaton College Student Government Association (SGA) President Alexandra Schibanoff ’12 reflected: “I think it absolutely reflects Wheaton’s values. This is why I came to Wheaton, this is why I stayed at Wheaton—because, more so than any other college I’ve ever seen, our student voice matters.”
“The fact that we even knew about the policy proposal before it was determined really speaks to Wheaton’s character,” Schibanoff said. “If the administration continues to listen to what the students have to say, that’s a really positive step.”
Another student, Patrick Crane ’14, who had made a Facebook video questioning the administration’s reasoning behind the housing policy change, told the Wire, “I think they did a great job of bouncing the idea [to] us and then responding to feedback. Even if it wasn’t the move they wanted, they responded to what the Wheaton students said, and I thought that was amazing.” (See: Proposed housing policy ousted after public outcry, The Wheaton Wire, February 20, 2012.)
This was not an isolated instance but a consequence of Wheaton’s deep-rooted culture of shared governance between students and administration. Another example dates back to 2015, when dining policy changes—including the expansion of Emerson Dining Hall hours and “Lyons Swipe” options— were presented to Senate for a student vote by then Vice President of Finance and Administration Brian Douglas, Director of Dining Services John Bragel, and Manager (now Director) of Business Services Kim Lavallee. (See: SGA votes on changes to the dining plans, The Wheaton Wire, September 23, 2015.)
Even campus traditions reflected this ethos of transparency and accountability. An SGA roast—humorous yet pointed—created space for public critique of elected representatives, reinforcing a culture where leadership invited scrutiny rather than avoided it. (See: SGA Roast invites rare moment for public mockery, The Wheaton Wire, April 11, 2012.)
History serves as a benchmark—a way to assess not only where we are, where we have been, and what has changed, but also whether those changes move us closer to or further from our shared values. It holds the present accountable.
Without collective memory, decisions that might once have prompted debate can instead appear with a manufactured sense of inevitability. This is why history has always been politically charged. Institutions, like governments, often reshape, obscure, sanitize, or quietly move past their own histories.
When memory fades, so does the ability to question in an informed manner.
In The Wire’s newsroom, we strive to resist that erosion by preserving institutional memory in print—rather than in the postmodern digital abyss, where information can be constantly reshaped, updated, and sometimes erased—in the hope that future students inherit not only outcomes, but the debates that shaped them and the agency that made them possible.
Spring may revive conversation, but sustaining it and translating it to a reclamation of power in decision-making spaces requires persistence beyond the first moment of pushback.
I’d like to close with two voices from Wheaton’s past:
“We don’t think that is right, especially not when we collectively, our parents [and] other family members, sacrifice so much to scrape together tuition money and become consumers of everything the college has to offer, from classes to [residence halls] to meals to career resources to campus safety.” — Wheaton College Student Advocates, a controversial Facebook group discussing administrative silence in response to a petition on change.org calling for increasing administrative transparency in 2013.
“You see it in a lot of quotes: never doubt the ability of a small group of people to change something, because in the end it is the only thing that ever does.” — Patrick Crane ’14, Proposed housing policy ousted after public outcry, The Wheaton Wire, February 20, 2012.
In dialogue,
Khushi Parikh ’26
Co-Editor-in-Chief