Sometime between when the Usdan bulletin boards got cleared last night and around 11 AM when one of our editors spotted this, these posters reading “An idle administration is a failed one.” went up. It is unclear whether the administration in question is Wesleyan’s, Trump’s, or some other one, but clearly someone is upset about something. If you have any information regarding the origin or meaning of these posters, please contact us at staff[at]wesleying[dot]org or via the tipbox.
[EDIT: 10/1, 1:09 pm]
We received the following anonymous tip in response to this post (cw: sexual harassment/assault, racism):
“there are so many professors who get away with “mildly inappropriate” things. like a hand hovering too low on a female students back. or getting too close to one’s ear during office hours. when are we going to get replacements for the THREE fucking therapists who quit this year? we live in an idle country, in a system ran by idle white men, who own and commodify any and all forms of labor and feast off of our suffering. what is change in a world that normalizes extreme trauma. what is change in a world that hushes survivors. what is change in a world full of liberal arts schools who obviously have some deeply rooted administrative issues. what is change when we use stories and cartoons for the shock factor, for the trauma porn. there isn’t any progress, nothing has changed and if it has what is it? just because misogyny and power dynamics is opening talked about doesn’t mean that anything has shifted. we graduate, but the stories stay with us. we get jobs, but the bosses still hold wages over us. we vote, but the white senator still has the final count. what is talk if there is no effect. letting administers and administrations of all levels vegetate. some of us are tired of the charades. so this is a call to action. if u see a colleague act weird, report them. if u see a friend struggling ask them what’s happening. and if u see your state politicians violently and loudly push their misogyny and false sense of innocence onto you, revolt. physically. i’m tired of living in an idle political climate that extends down into my own personal and academic life. and i know there are others.”
[EDIT: 10/3, 2:40 pm]
Some additional posters went up elaborating on the original brief message:
Alice Swan ’21 wrote in to provide a definitive explanation of the posters origin and meaning:
“Hey, those posters on the wall at Usdan are actually from my Take a Knee protest during Family Weekend. I asked some of the event staff to make them visible afterwards, which is why they are there. These were created in addition to a list of demands presented to the administration. Some of said demands pertain to student of color livelihood on campus, as well as many of the things that students have been bringing up this semester that the administration has been blatantly unresponsive to.”