Volume CXXXII, Number 9 November 15, 2002 f

To break the silence, vitally
GENEVIEVE CREEDON
COLUMNIST

For most of my life, I have been tagged the model student and daughter, not because I have been either, but because I've merely seemed to be. Working hard and getting good grades go a long way in determining the way people view us, often inaccurately.

I have always struggled with speaking about personal issues and problems, so for a very long time, I simply didn't speak. In my last years of high school, I spent hours in my guidance counselor's office, literally incapable of saying even the simplest words. I just sat in silence.

I am finally beginning to understand fragments of the reasons behind that silence. I was taught to rely only on myself, not to invest in relationships. My family always had high, often unspoken expectations. They wanted me to lose weight. I did. It wasn't enough. I progressively starved myself, until I woke up in the mornings, shaking. Malnutrition. In high school, a girl I barely knew told me she was cutting. She thought I would do something to help her, because none of her friends could. One of my friends committed suicide around the same time. I had thought about suicide, years before, but the memories remain real.

The culture of success is a culture of silence. But here is the irony. All these issues, these struggles that we are claiming as marginal, taking place "in the shadows"-they are central, essential. They, and nothing else, hold us together.

I almost transferred at the end of last year to go to a more intellectually driven institution, but I stayed because I believe that Bowdoin presents the possibilities for very human connections that we are all desperately in need of finding. I stayed because two of my professors helped me believe in those possibilities.

I didn't come back to Bowdoin to change it. I came back to make it what I need for it to be. I came back so we could vitally engage each other.

Last Friday, in his common hour talk, Bob Vilas mentioned that relationships are by far the most important factor of healing. And to me, that statement pinpointed a painful deficiency in our culture. We need to live for relationships.

Before I end, I want to address students and faculty directly, because the only way for this place to change is for individuals to change.

Students: Forget the idea that college is supposed to be the best four years of our lives. What a sad concept-that the best will be over when we graduate. These four years are the only time we are encouraged to ask searching questions and experiment with different answers to find ideas that make sense to us. Engage in those questions. Converse. Conversations build the relationships that must sustain us. We need relationships, not drinking buddies. We need to be demanding of ourselves and of everyone around us. We all deserve to be here, but we deserve even more to get what we need from this place and the people here.

Faculty: I cannot tell you how many times I have wanted to speak these words, but I haven't known how to. I am here for an academic education that must be personal. I want to learn from you, to talk to you, to write to you. I want to know you. I want, no, I need relationships, and I know I am not exceptional. You are the ones who can break the silence and sustain the students on this campus. We want something more than what we are getting-to be vitally and personally engaged. We just don't know how to ask.

Change happens within people, before it can grow outwards. We can't accept a Bowdoin that leaves us unfulfilled, nor can we just forget everything and start over. So, we walk around, semi-conscious that something is not quite right. But we have the ability to create change, to engage the questions and struggles that must challenge us to be more than what we are. We just need to re-value what we have, for each other's sake. For sustenance.