We live in a world flooded by information (attention-deficit emails, tweets, and texting; anonymous trash talk, polarizing polemics, and bureaucratic diktats). How and where do we find time to listen and reflect, to question and create?
I’ve been searching for a process of communication that would help me to discuss important issues with the College community. By communication, I mean more than administrative pronouncements. I mean free exchange (commercio), in which we can learn from and teach one another in thoughtful, engaged ways. By community, I mean more than just the conventional list of students, faculty, staff, trustees, parents, friends, and so on. I mean the practiced recognition of our mutual commitments to strengthen our College, to serve and lift the broader society, to lead by example through the value of inspired citizenship (civitas). These are the bedrock values of our College.
So why from the kitchen table? As I explained in my first interview as president of the College in December 2012, when I was growing up, the kitchen table was the place for my family to discuss issues: from civil rights to the Vietnam war, from family dynamics to personal plans. This was a protected, warm (at times even heated) space in which to break bread, argue, joke, share news, and challenge one another. The kitchen table provides the shape of a social process that can help advance our shared values of free exchange and community, pose the most critically important questions, and help us meet the institutional imperatives of our time.
(This is also why I wanted from the kitchen table’s icon to fuse the image of a table with that of a question mark.)
Over the past year, we have been engaged in the most important national questions about higher education: value, affordability, and responsibility. In the fall of 2013, we launched The Student Imperative to provide our own answers, with commitments to sharpen and evidence a theory of value for CMC, to raise another $100 million in financial aid and scholarships, and to reinforce personal and social responsibility on our campus.
From this page—from my kitchen table—I will be sending you a series of messages with an initial focus on these three core priorities.
Over time, I hope this tool will help us share critical observations, generate new ideas, pose tough questions, make open reports on our progress, frame issues—all in an effort to advance and enhance our shared vision and mutual commitments.
Beyond the questions I’d like to raise, I also invite your questions. Please always feel free in communicating those to me. Thank you in advance for listening and responding in kind, and welcome to the kitchen table.