Personally I found the chancellor’s words appropriate: this is a time of great difficulty across the board, and it’s also a time to stand together as a community. I was heartened to see that the only request for financial support in the letter was a request to fund the students—“For those who are able, please continue to support us financially, with special emphasis on support of our scholarship programs.” Further, a lot of attention was given to the need to provide for everyone appropriately, including a commitment to providing greater increases in compensation for those who receive the least compensation overall. The chancellor crafted a well-reasoned, measured, thoughtful letter that implicitly, if not explicitly, addressed the needs of the entire University community.

What I found interesting was that, in the op-ed itself and in all of the responses to the op-ed, there seemed to be much more of a sustained effort toward criticism than toward finding a constructive way forward. Reasonable people can disagree; not everyone read the chancellor’s letter the way I did. But given that, given the possibility for disagreement and the possibility for finding things to criticize in the letter, it strikes me that reasonable people are only “reasonable” insomuch as they disagree in a reasonable way.

To me, disagreement is only reasonable if it serves a purpose.

The op-ed rails against the establishment and criticizes the failure of the chancellor to do and say enough, without establishing what enough is, without creating or defending any kind of an argument. The responses to the op-ed point out Morgan’s failure to offer compelling evidence, the weaknesses in his math and the elitist/racist undertones, without offering a compelling alternative—support for Chancellor Wrighton or a concurring critique legitimated by well-developed reasons and a nod toward being constructive.

My thought is this: when we, as a community, get bogged down in pointing fingers and assigning blame and criticizing one another, we lose the ability to change. We lose the ability to change because we lose the ability to see, to see both ourselves and that which needs to change. One party attacks and another gets defensive, and instead of a useful conversation about what could be done right in the future it turns into a useless debate about who was more wrong in the past.

Now is not the time to point fingers. Now is not the time to wax righteously-indignant, to stereotype and attack the community at large and it is not the time to be baited by such attacks and drawn away from the real issues. Anyone can criticize; very few can create positive change. And without that change, without bringing forward a meaningful contribution to whatever given debate it is with which we are involved, without finding a way to both see problems and see solutions to those problems, I ask again: What’s the point?

I’m not trying to criticize, I’m not trying to cast blame; I’m trying only to offer food for thought. It strikes me that it would serve us all well, in hard times and in life in general, to pause and, before we speak, figure out why we speak. There should always be a point.

Why was everyone so riled up about Randy’s column? I’ve heard a couple of reasons.

The first is that its method was disrespectful and poorly executed. Criticism is fine, people said, but not when it is displayed in such a way. The Orientation Executive Board implies the same thing in their letter to the editor: They “would appreciate constructive criticism” sent to their e-mail address in clear opposition to what they thought Brachman’s article perpetrated.

I thought his criticism was indeed constructive: Most mandatory events entailed being talked at. Other events made it hard to interact with other freshmen. Events went late and caused sleep deprivation. Events were not memorable.

And his method, though perhaps not expert, was honest. He began with an introduction of self: “I am a freshman, and here is my personal experience.” He claims no more authority than that. He admits that he likes winning, and he acknowledges the reader-writer pact. His tone is sincere.

Comments and letters to the editor in opposition to the article, though, were generally neither constructive nor expertly formulated. Two of the comments were bitterly sarcastic: “I think your humility will truly benefit the WU community” and “I am sure that constructive criticism and positive thinking would do much to spare next year’s freshmen from suffering such a horrible fate as yours.” Needless to say, not only are these writers jerks, but also their style contradicts their own assertions.

And if we are talking about poor execution, let’s talk about the letters to the editor. I won’t point out particular parts in Joseph Marcus’ letter because I admire him for putting himself out there in the name of positivity, but I will say that I am surprised that nobody commented about his writing style—when we agree with the content, we let poor execution slip by, though we pounce on it feverishly when we think it purports controversial beliefs.

The Orientation executives’ letter, on the other hand, bothers me not so much with its sterile verbage but with its own lack of support for its claims. The “freshman orientation evaluation from this year,” on which Orientation activities appear to be “highly ranked as fun programs,” doesn’t have any bearing at all on Brachman’s claims. He made legitimate criticisms, and high “fun” rankings (and number one rankings for helpfulness in preparing for Wash. U.—duh) don’t refute those. Only good sense does, and we don’t see that in the Executive Board’s letter.

I understand as well the second criticism of Brachman’s article, and perhaps the one that most inflamed tempers: that many people had worked very hard on Orientation this year for very little compensation. A lot, indeed, was put into this event.

But hear this: Every Monday, Wednesday and Friday, Student Life comes out with a staff editorial criticizing something in the University that has gone wrong. Last Monday, it was communication about construction. Now, I cannot even imagine the amount of resources going into construction right now and the amount of effort going into the links between Clayco, Residential Life and Washington University as a whole. It is on their minds, to be sure. But they still do a terrible job at this communication. Nobody has any idea what is going on with construction. This need to change. Using so many resources to do a job so poorly is even sadder than not having tried in the first place.

The same goes for all Student Life staff editorials, and the same goes for Student Life columns. People, generally, do the best they can. They know the goal, and they are working toward it. But sometimes they do an awful job. That’s where we step in, as an entity not so entrenched in the relevant work as to be blind to its macro results.

People work hard, but often they need to change anyway. Communication about construction certainly does. Maybe Orientation needs to change as well.