Editor’s Note: All opinion section content reflects the views of the individual author only and does not represent a stance taken by The Collegian or its editorial board.
It is nearly impossible to predict the trajectory of a year from a singular day. Attempting to do so, in most cases, would be futile — one simply cannot measure a full year in a week, a month, a minute or a vibe. A rainy Monday doesn’t promise yearlong monsoons; stubbing your toe once or twice doesn’t mean you must avoid all doors, tables, corners and hinges.
Despite this common agreement, our hearts don’t always follow such logic. For astrologists, Jupiter entering Leo last month promises a year of long-lasting abundance. For the superstitious optimists, finding a penny on the ground or a ladybug on the shoulder grants enduring good luck.
For the first-year version of me — and likely a version of many of you — a single lucky night on Colorado State University’s campus indisputably meant I would be looking forward to a year, or two, or four, of pure adrenaline and straight euphoria.
It was more than optimism. From my very first moment on campus, I felt guaranteed to have the time of my life. Each day of Ram Welcome, group leaders fed us stories of friendship, school spirit, keg stands and the like. Their version of CSU — which I now realize had been most likely coached into them — was the personification of a college tour pamphlet.
I was eager to live out the college experience I had predicted at that moment, a promise of freedom and opportunity so invitingly delivered by the administration’s many welcome programs. And for about a third of my time here, it did feel like I was living out that vow: I made friends, got an apartment and joined this paper that I so dearly love. I went all in. I said yes. A lot of laughing. A little crying.
But no matter how eagerly I tried to pursue that promise, this presidential administration had other plans. Halfway into my sophomore year, the veil dropped, the gavel banged and campus submerged in a deluge of abhorrent administrative decisions. Students and faculty were drowned on and off for about a year, breaking the surface with protest on one issue only to be met with another.
My vision of life as a college student quickly solidified into a different type of thing, and my remaining years were no longer just a matter of planned prediction; their success became dictated by the extent to which CSU would control my peace and my freedom — two things that they promised us as solely ours on day one.
As I witnessed my peers face threats of arrest in the plaza, our faculty have endured being blindsided by reasonless layoffs and my administration wipe many diversity, equity and inclusion initiatives without a word, the juxtaposition between the college experience I had predicted for myself and my peers and the college experience that has been given to us to have become an eerie chasm of lost potential. Many of us were made to feel stupidly optimistic for wanting clarity, freedom and representation on campus, all factors that, again, were once so earnestly marketed as pillars of the student experience.
There is very little room to take hold of your future or to predict how far it may take you when you are told its limits by a higher power. And while CSU has since made efforts to widen such boundaries for us students again, I still feel as though our stability is tethered to an administrative force that feels entirely unpredictable. It’s hard to escape from that unsteady feeling, and reasonably so — but that isn’t to say we’ll never return to stability.
Even if the CSU administration yet again threatens to encroach on student livelihood, the probability of your success will not diminish if your voice dares to challenge a different outcome. I am proud to say that I’m a student here not because of the administration but because of the student voices that have championed it time and time again.
Admittedly, my college experience has appeared in stints, and I recognize that many other students likely feel the same. We have had to learn and come of age while holding our breaths. But I believe that a force even stronger than hesitancy or skepticism is a demand for the truth. Do not wait to be outspoken about your education, your freedom and the impact of your lived experience until someone else is trying to stifle it. Don’t leave what you deserve up to the chances of someone else.
Though we must not be so idealistic as to predict a year of peace from a moment of administrative silence, I can assuredly bet that if we’re prepared to speak, to command and to question today, we’ll be ready to holler anytime.
Reach Emma Souza at letters@collegian.com or on social media @RMCollegian.
