The introduction to the 1969 Magaziner-Maxwell Report, the document that led to the New Curriculum, states in part:
“Conversations and written materials about education are steeped in meaningless rhetoric, issues are only partly presented, not enough time is spent in considering basic questions, remedies are forced into an incoherent, patchwork pattern — all while the university continues to operate and grow without a fundamental knowledge of where, why and how it is going.”
Improving the status quo is never easy, especially when everyone is relatively content. The Magaziner-Maxwell Report was born from an era of countrywide disillusionment with universities. We are eerily familiar today with the sentiment expressed above. The difference is that, lacking any universal distress, we have yet to take action. It is time to stop being content, because contentedness leads to complacency, and complacency leads to failure. To take Brown to its next great evolution, we must all reignite our ambition for better and greater.
Everyone I knew as a student at Brown loved it, and while they could rattle off a list of small troubles, the core engine of student happiness was clearly working. Differentiating between what students think they want and what they really want, not to mention making more than just a surface “fix,” is a problem unto itself. But we aren’t students anymore; we are alumni, so how do we feel about Brown now?
What do we need as alumni? Not just incremental wants like “better community in my area,” but currently impossible wants like “to take a class from time to time” or “to carry a piece of Brown around in my pocket” — and I don’t mean your Brown keychain.
What does “Brown in your pocket” mean? I don’t know — let’s figure it out. Real progress is hard because the view beyond what currently “works” is blurry and uncertain: How much did you want a smartphone before it existed? Change is important and exciting and inevitable. The only hard part is changing for the better.
Luckily, Brown has a heritage of true change and the guts to stick with it. No one can argue that Brown’s switch to the New Curriculum 50 years ago was bad. Our open curriculum is Brown’s defining feature! How difficult, however, must it have been to see then how beloved it would be today? How much turmoil did students then have to power through to secure what we have today? Visionary change like this is taxing on everyone involved, and it succeeds by volume of support and strength of will.
Like the social revolution that framed Brown’s metamorphosis to the open curriculum, a technological revolution frames the Brown of today. In this context Brown once again finds itself an immature form in need of growth and change.
Some change is a given — Brown has email, WiFi and online course registration — but is Brown going to fall behind as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University put their lectures online, Yale puts student interaction at the forefront of technology and startups not even affiliated with universities take education to the masses? Or is Brown, after 50 years, ready once again to undertake brave changes of its own?
Alumni are not just Automatic Donation Machines for this process. We have a powerful combination of traits that means we need to be involved in Brown’s breaking from the status quo: We love and know Brown from our time as students, we know the real world and some part of us “wants back in” to that Brown experience. We need Brown to take our battle-hardened advice about issues on campus. We want to see lectures online from our amazing Brown professors. We want to raise the bar for pre-college learning in our home areas. We want to participate in a meaningful way with an extended Brown circle that includes alumni, faculty members, students and future students. We need to learn, network and create value with the collegiate melting pot we last experienced while attending Brown.
It’s time to coordinate alumni events in your area. It’s time to write to the administration about the strategic plan and other news. It’s time to write your opinion piece for The Herald and start or join discussions like “Brown: The Next 250 Years.” It’s time to participate in the alumni groups on LinkedIn and to join us discussing these issues on Rsolv.
Real progress is incompatible with contentment. It’s time to stop being content and start getting mad. Mad that a Brown with insufficient “knowledge of where, why and how it is going” is a Brown with a death sentence. Now that you’re mad, look around and figure out what you want! Now that you know what you want, let’s make it happen!
Adrik McIlroy ’11 encourages Brown students to engage in this discussion at brown.rsolv.com.
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