Paradise

Weialala leia

Wallala leialala

Richard Wagner, Götterdämmerung

Written in spray paint on a transformer outside of the McLean Building are the words “Live On Back Feed.”

Many a time while passing this building, I have told myself that Backfeed would be an excellent name for my band. If only we could keep a stable lineup. Applications are open for all positions.

Course surveys are now open, which means the apocalypse is upon us. Plague has banished us from our classrooms, but Finals shall soon be here. And I heard, as it were, the noise of thunder. One of the four beasts saying, “Come and see.” And I saw, and behold, a white horse.

And so as the semester draws to a close, so too does this experiment in resurrection that I have labeled The Friday Observer.

In the Fall semester, I twice published pieces in this column that served more as an outline of my present complaints with the current status of Stevens Institute of Technology than true prose. These complaints included

• The level of apathy towards the educational experience, as well as towards students with disabilities, in administrative decisions related to campus construction,
• The antipathy towards student organizations who require physical space on campus to operate normally,
• The increasingly high number of on-campus meeting rooms that are barred for use by students, even when they are unoccupied most of the day and appear conveniently right next to student classrooms or student organization-managed office space,
• The ongoing refusal of some members of the Stevens administration to truthfully respond to simple questions about campus operations and plans, and furthermore the concerted effort among a small number of administrators to ensure that no news (positive or negative) reaches the community without first going through the spin room,
• The ongoing abdication of responsibility by some members of the Stevens bureaucracy, especially in the Division of Facilities and Campus Operations (where I have had simple work orders and requests go unanswered for over 1 calendar year) and the Division of Information Technology,
• The lack of basic knowledge on campus operations and policies among some members of the SGA Budget Committee, which has (due to this lack of knowledge) enforced nonexistent rules and denied funding for critical and legitimately necessary expenses, and;
• The complete radio silence by the Office of the Provost and others about any plans, or even any desire, to refund the money that they admitted in September they improperly took from students.

Sadly, I’m not convinced that any of what I felt was most pressingly concerning in September or December has truly been addressed. My motivation behind establishing this column was to effect change via starting conversations and raising the level of consciousness of the student body, inspired in no small part by the (very appreciated!) willingness of the Stevens administration to reëvaluate the priority scheduling system after a lengthy Letter to the Editor I authored on the subject was published in early November 2018. I was optimistic about the ability for visibility and persuasive writing to influence this university for the better.

Perhaps my optimism was misplaced.

The life cycle of a Stevens student is a subject that has fascinated me greatly. I dedicated an entire piece to it in October, and my appreciation of the cyclical nature of studentship has only grown since. I realize now that in this cycle, it is time for me to take the role of an elder statesman, someone far too jaded and cynical to get in the trenches anymore but who has distant and fleeting memories of tactics that resulted in victory in the past.

Some of the victories that I witnessed were nothing less than absolute triumphs; the zeitgeist that appeared on campus after the publication of my very first Stute article, which revealed that President N. Farvardin earned about $1.6 million in 2016, was quite unlike anything I have experienced since. Every Stevens-related group chat on every platform I am in was discussing it for some weeks, and I would often find people in conversations at student events or even before classes talking about it. So widespread was this zeigeist that I even managed to meet with the Vice President for Human Resources and the Associate Vice President for Finance at once! I knew that being able to clear time in the schedules of these naturally very busy men was a momentous moment at the time, especially for a first-time writer, but the last two years have only deepened my appreciation for that accomplishment.

The reason for that is simple. Most of the time, you fail. The reason I use the analogy of trench warfare is because fighting for positive change at this school is quite a brutal and demoralizing experience. You have to try, and try, and try, and try, and try, and if you slip up once you’ll lose untold amounts of progress. What I came to believe during my paleolithic third semester was that all of that trying and losing was more than worth it if it meant that I could leave this school a better place for future generations. I believed, to the fullest extent that I could, that any bruises I sustained would be vindicated fully and completely by the ability for posterity to not suffer the same blows.

I still do believe that, but I am quite tired now. I read the Slack workspace run by the Student Government Association now and, seeing bright-eyed freshmen ask the same confused questions about why things are the way they are that I did when I was a bright-eyed freshman, I really feel as if I am beginning to relate to stereotypical movie generals who derisively laugh at cadets in boot camp who believe that they are about to do something glorious.

It is a strange and alien experience. For years I fought for the idea that I was improving things for posterity, and now I am saying hello to that posterity and they are none the wiser. I remember looking up at juniors and seniors in entrenched executive board positions as a freshman and being inspired by the nuance and detail that is present in the history of student life here; now, I, a rising senior, am tasked with having such an understanding of the potentials within that nuance and detail as to be able to guide those freshmen into their golden ages.

In a way, it’s sad. The list of things I fought to change and couldn’t is far larger than the list of things I actually managed to change.

But in another way, it can’t be sad, because, as former Media Subcommittee Head and WCPR General Manager Andy Waldron said at Leadership Connect 2019, at the end of the day, you’re talking about student life at a college. When you have a real job, “it’s like, I know how to email Chris Shemanski but that isn’t relevant anymore.”

I am very excited about the possibilities that new blood will bring to this campus. I am sure that countless students will step up to the same plates I did and swing at the same balls. Hopefully, eventually, some of them will hit home runs.

For now, I’m content to walk.

What I hope, though, is that the posterity I fought for never stops stepping up to that plate. I’m sure even the current freshmen will face challenges that I couldn’t even imagine right now. To paraphrase Dr. Neil deGrasse Tyson, the most terrifying part of life, and the thing we should fear the most, is that we have no idea what could be coming in the future that should be scaring us now.

To those of you who are about to spend three years in the trenches I have just now crawled out of, I salute you. May you have better luck than I, or at least the same amount. Take up the burden of studentship, the burden of the free, and carry it with you. The hairs on your arm will stand up at the terror in each sip, and in each sup. Will you partake of that last offered cup, or disappear into the potter’s ground?

Unreal City — What have I gained, what have I lost — what I have gained by avoiding trial; what have I lost by avoiding æventyr?

Götterdämmerung, but no götterdämmerung. But no ragnarök.

The thunder comes where it has not come before. It will not come again.

The skyline used to impress me. It doesn’t anymore. A backdrop to more impressive, more important scenes.

A friend of mine told me something that made me feel as if I were Hamlet, reborn and repatriated. But two months dead — nay, not so much, not two. So excellent a king, that was to this Hyperion to a satyr.

Must I remember?

I believe, fully, that when I eventually do leave this campus for good that it will be in a better place than when I entered it. The impact that I have had is not profound, but in several ways it is important locally. I have solved problems plaguing students for years, in ways that future students will never even know. My heart is, broadly, warmed by this. But only slightly.

There will always be new challenges. For example, right now, the Provost has actively refused to take measures to ensure that students can succeed in their classes through pandemic conditions. In their refusal announcement, they cited several falsehoods as justification for sacrificing the student body.

Of course this is infuriating. Of course this is inhumane. Of course anybody who actually listened to the students and read their writing on the subject would come to the exact opposite conclusion that the Office of the Provost did.

But time has run out, my friends. Time has run out. Finals are upon us. The twilight of gods.

I shudder to think of the depths that Stevens will reach in its future history. I smile, weakly and somewhat derisively, at the future peaks. I know that I have not seen the best or the worst. I know, too, that I have seen things at this school that nobody else ever will. Hidden secrets and memories made, sudden occurrences that I was just at the right place at the right time and knew the right people to experience. There are some things, even, that I am bound not to tell anyone until after I graduate — I hope you all are ready for those stories!

But even then, I cannot begin to imagine the unenumerable secrets that I will never know, the untold stories which I will never hear. The little victories and losses in the trench warfare of life, simultaneously far broader and far more narrow than any specific goal, place, or sequence of discrete events. In the end, every conversation held by me at this school will become irrelevant. Every video I’ve seen of the SGA, every club election, every email to and from administrators… eventually, there will be a point where all of these things, individually, cease to have any relevance to current students. The funny thing is that nobody will know when this moment occurs. Nobody will know the exact moment when who won an election this year or what bills passed the Senate or what organizations were approved or denied in the New Organization Process no longer affects any future events. But eventually, eventually, that time will come.

And when that time comes, when what happens today and this year and in the four years of my term at Stevens ceases to affect any future students, the relevance of these stories will live on only in the minds of those who were there to experience them. There are some stories that I will never tell; moments that were too beautiful or too intricate to possibly explain to someone who didn’t experience them with me.

Years will go by, some memories will be forgotten, and some will not. But eventually, these moments, these hidden stories of humanity and æventyr, will be reduced to a single line on a single page of the Stevens Indicator, one of 60 lines on one of 80 pages on one of 2 issues published every year, that announces that you have died. Perhaps you will not even get a line. Perhaps you will, like one alumnus from the Class of 1948, be reduced to an editor’s note announcing your death some years prior. With this announcement, the memories you made, the secrets you kept or didn’t keep, the stories you told or didn’t tell, the broadest possible potential and the narrowest truths of history, will all vanish permanently and irrevocably. With this line — authored perhaps by your best friend, perhaps by your most hated enemy, or perhaps by someone you had never even met — the relevance you have to Stevens students, current and future, ends.

Is this sad? Is this troubling? Is this existentially terrifying?

Maybe. But far more importantly than that, it’s just true.

You can let that knowledge bog you down if you want to. You could ignore it and go about your merry day, believing (correctly) that such knowledge could not possibly ever alter your life in any conceivable way, and knowing, too, that trying to either fight or assist the truth is equally futile.

I was taught in Introduction to Project Management that people always sound smarter if they respond to a question by repeating the question and asking for clarification about the context of their expected answer. This is, supposedly, equal parts cheating the question to give more time to answer and taking the 50/50 lifeline to give a more qualified, based-on-what-they-probably-want-to-hear answer. What I have found in my own life is that attempting to limit open-ended thoughts to the strictest context possible is almost a silver bullet to achieve productivity.

So when I think of all the memories I have made that are so profoundly important to me but that will never be profound or important to anyone else, when I think of all the deeds (good and bad) I have done at Stevens that will one day cross the event horizon to become irrelevant, when I think of all the time and effort and sanity that I have spent here advocating and fighting for things that one day will not matter to anyone, I don’t get bogged down. I don’t get sad. I don’t get troubled. I’m not terrified.

I know that what I do and have done will be relevant and will mater to those who lie within the correct context. They may not know it, but it is true. It’s just true.

To quote my favorite scene from my favorite novel: “One minute was enough […] A person had to work hard for it, but a minute of perfection was worth the effort. A moment was the most you could ever expect from perfection.”

I have lived my life by this idea. The idea that achieving perfection irrevocably justifies all work and effort that was put into the achievement. The idea that perfection is not a state of being, but a momentary lapse of imperfection that requires potentially infinite work to achieve, but is, just by its own nature, vindicating of that work.

This is how I approach all things in my life, and this approach is what led me to return, time and time again, to the trenches of advocacy at Stevens. To the lodestone rock.

It does not bother me if history will smile or frown upon my story, because I know that history does not care and will not see me at all.

What some parts of history will see is the fruits of my work. What some — not many, but some — people will see is a world and an Institute of Technology that is better in unnoticeable ways because of the efforts that I have put in.

In this pursuit, I feel justified. Not vindicated. But justified.

I am proud of this work. I am proud that when I do graduate, I will be able to confidently say that I contributed to the effort towards perfection at Stevens. Not everyone can say this. Not everyone was my brother while I fought in the trenches. I will remember who was, and I will cherish the moments we shared and the ideas we traded while I can.

But that doesn’t matter now.

What matters is that the shadow passes over me. The shadow of Nosferatu’s fingers. “Something different than either your shadow at morning striding behind you or your shadow at evening rising to meet you.” As close to perfection as I could possibly reach: That is where I will go. And once I get there, I will leave.

To quote my favorite video game, “I left my heart in the Sierra Madre. Finding it, though, that’s not the hard part. It’s letting go.”

I leave you, O loyal reader, and close this experimental phase of The Friday Observer with this:

You who are about to enter the trenches

You who have long since soldiered into Stevens–death

You who remain still in that dark place, searching for peace

You who have lost unimaginably, seeking only to gain

You who have grown gluttonous, seeking only pride

You who stay quiet, saying nothing and hearing less

You who were forced to leave earlier than the rest

You who broke clear away from the pack

You who are now a stranger with no one to call home

You who have no qualms piking the albatross

You who never managed to move on

You who never managed to stay

You who never called me a brother despite being kin

You who were I in another time

Go now, walk boldly towards perfection, and stop for no man and no thing that would deny you paradise.

Shantih shantih shantih.