The end of another school year means another round of goodbyes. For me, the bittersweetness is both palpable and laughable. I hate cliches, and after three years of dedicated service to The Equinox, I had imagined I’d go out with more of a bang than a graduation column. But the times are too pressing to ignore, and tackling one issue at a time isn’t always sufficient.
A recent post in the College Journalism Newsletter ponders the value of these sorts of goodbye pieces, and it highlights a point I do feel is often overlooked. It’s true that student newsrooms are serious business. That’s something proven every day with blood, sweat and tears. But those newsrooms are also communities that mean a lot to student-journalists. The Equinox is a job, but it’s also a club, and I’ve forged some valuable connections and even lasting friendships through my involvement with it.
Here’s the flipside: The target audience of the point made in the newsletter post is those who operate within the world of collegiate journalists. Right now, I’m writing to you, a member of the KSC community. I’ve met a lot of people at and around the college, and I hope the majority of them have understood my role as their neighbor. But I fear many may not be aware of the reverse. In addition to their importance for fostering social ties and community among those at and around the college, student organizations are a matter of public service.
In the spiral of constant crises we wake up to every day, it can be difficult to tell where one ends and the other begins. Higher education enrollment is on a nationwide decline; with the fall in enrollment, institutions are struggling to stay afloat while lawmakers try to deliver killing blows with cuts to appropriations. Here at KSC, student organizations have to grapple with a crisis of involvement. And when the involvement isn’t there, the public service doesn’t get done.
The support departments within the college are able to offer students is limited, not helped by waves of staff cuts and an overall sense of fatigue and low morale. Besides that, on an institutional level, the incentives of administrative staff will often be unaligned with those of students, through no individual fault of either party. In many cases, students are the ones who must lead the charge to get stuff done and provide for one another. To imagine a version of operations where that would not be true is to imagine a radically different model of higher education. I’d love to discuss what that might look like, but I don’t think anybody should be holding their breath for such a degree of change to come about.
Within the current environment, the pressing issue is that not only are there not enough students rising to the challenge of getting stuff done, but several among the few that do take on the burden seem to approach their work with a lack of direction or vision. The social element of involvement, with all the networking and event attendance numbers and photography for social media, is encouraged. The discipline and humility of recognizing and planning around community needs are more difficult to incentivize.
There must be balance between these elements of involvement for student communities to really thrive. Over time, one cannot survive without the other.
At the end of the 2024-25 academic year, I stepped down from my role as the managing executive editor of The Equinox. That was another bittersweet moment for me, but I needed some room to breathe, and I knew the organization was in capable hands.
A couple of months into this academic year, my restlessness got the better of me. I heard from my friend that the Feminist Collective (FemCo) was in a bad way. A series of misfortunes had left the organization with only two e-board members and no general members. It looked like it could be curtains for the club, and I couldn’t bear the thought of seeing years of past students’ labor and an entire apparatus of social and political support go down the drain.
I’m graduating now as the outgoing president of FemCo, and as proud as I am of the work I did to keep the organization alive, I can’t toot my own horn too much. Seeing the team of my wonderful, talented friends that now makes up the current e-board is a far preferable reality than one in which FemCo ceased to exist, to be sure, but it has been a difficult and often disheartening road that has led to a fraction of the success I hoped for. We took every opportunity we could see to boost our brand while also striving toward our mission of feminist, inclusive public service. This year’s installment of Sex Toy Bingo, FemCo’s annual flagship event, is possibly the most packed I’ve ever seen the Mabel Brown Room. Even so, our average meeting attendance struggles to reach double digits.
To the same degree I don’t want to brag about any of FemCo’s accomplishments, I also don’t want to come across as if I’m griping that more people haven’t joined my club specifically. Instead, I think my experience with FemCo is illustrative of the larger problem I’m trying to express here.
College is a great time to build yourself up personally and professionally, and I absolutely believe students should seize the opportunities that arise for them to do so. At the same time, each student must recognize their status as parts of a greater whole that will not stop existing, transforming and mattering when they graduate. We all have just as many opportunities to work collectively toward mutually beneficial goals as we do to fill up our LinkedIn profiles, and those opportunities are every bit as necessary and fulfilling.
Take pride in your presence at Keene State College and in what you have to offer to your friends, your neighbors and your peers. Everyone’s lives are improved when you find it within yourself to put in the work and lead selflessly.
I’ve never been perfect in my efforts to embody such a mindset, but I’d like to think I’m leaving Keene State a little better than I found it. I can say for a fact that the reverse is true.
Charlotte King can be contacted
cking@kscequinox.com
