Hanover College Triangle on

Student Rights

October 8, 1971

Fred Mower and Jerry Sutherlin, "Where Has All the Candor Gone?" Triangle 8 October 1971, 4.

Students of Hanover College are evidently considered to be quite gullible. Explanations which we receive to certain of our questions are either “off the record” or in the category of God made it that way so that is the way that it is. We begin to wonder if we are ever to be treated as capable of understanding anything which requires any degree of intelligence.

There appear to be specific instance in which student matters and concerns have been handled with a distinct lack of candor.

The first question that we would ask is whatever happened to the proposed open house revisions? If memory serves us correctly this issue first arose last February. Admittedly the proposals were not finalized until late in the Winter Term, but the fact remains that we have heard nothing relating to what considerations the proposal has so far received. Whose desk is it now sitting on? Are we to believe that this student proposal is so lacking in merit as to be quietly shoved aside and forgotten? Was this subject broached in the recent Trustee meeting and, if so, what action, if any, was taken on it?

Such situations are not new at Hanover. Only last February, the members of this college community were subjected to a silly memorandum regarding camping by students. To many of us, a letter such as that serves only to undermine one of the ideals of liberal education by removing the students supposed capacity for running their own lives responsibly.

Then there is the alleged statement by certain officials that nothing permanent was to be done on the athletic fields until the new library and fine arts building were taken care of. We want to see a fine athletic complex constructed as well as the next person, but one must certainly be confused when one sees the “temporary” west grandstands constructed of brick and mortar while we of the campus community have heard nothing more of the proposed fine arts building.

Instances such as these cause us to question the real reasons and truth of anything we are told.