Shimerians Always Stir it Up

Found on Tumblr from a current Shimer student.

I recall when I was a student that T-shirts were certainly "choice".

"lovely-petunia:

Oh look at Shimer, causing a ruckus."

LiveBlog, Tweet of the Special Assembly

http://twitter.com/samuelhenderson

If you would like to follow what is going on at the Feb. 28th Special Assembly. It's a doozy.

Special Assembly Feb. 28th Agenda

THE ASSEMBLY OF SHIMER COLLEGE

AGENDA FOR THE SPECIAL MEETING OF FEBRUARY 28, 2010

I Resolution, motivated by the Agenda Committee

Resolved:

Whereas the Board of Trustees adopted a statement called a
“mission statement,” written by President Thomas Lindsay, on February
19, 2010;

Whereas this statement is without the support of the faculty,
the students, the administrative staff, or the vast majority of alumni
who have addressed it, and is upheld only by 18 out of 34 Trustees;

Whereas the Assembly by overwhelming majority and the Faculty
unanimously have voted to retain the current mission statement at
least for the time being;

Whereas the statement approved by the Board does not meet the
criterion of the College’s academic accreditor, the Higher Learning
Commission, that “Understanding of and support of the mission pervade
the organization” (Accreditation Criterion 1c);

Whereas the statement, unlike all other mission statement
proposals, was never submitted to the Self-Study Group, or brought to
the Assembly, but was sent exclusively to Trustees, and only five days
before they were to vote on it;

Whereas the statement was approved by the Board under threat by
a major donor, delivered one day before the Board plenary, that
funding would cease if the statement were not adopted;

Whereas shortly before the Board plenary President Lindsay urged
the Trustees on the Executive Committee to resign if they would not
vote for his statement, and told another Trustee that he would “have
to go” or words to that effect if he did not vote for his statement;
and,

Whereas the statement was voted on by the Board without the
customary notification of a vote in the meeting agenda, after only 75
minutes of consideration, and without observance of equal time for
those opposed;

Therefore,

The Assembly of Shimer College does not recognize the legitimacy
or authority of this so-called “mission statement.”


II Resolution, motivated by the Agenda Committee

Resolved:

The Assembly declares that it has no confidence in the ability
of President Thomas Lindsay to lead Shimer College.


III Announcement from the Agenda Committee regarding future mission
statement proposals.


IV Other announcements


[The Assembly will convene at 4 PM in Cinderella Lounge.]

Letter from the Faculty to the Board Re Mission Statement Changes

The Faculty supports unanimously the Assembly's recent vote to uphold the current mission statement of Shimer College. In doing so we confirm and uphold our responsibility for the College's mission itself: in word, education.

The Faculty and Assembly together, rather than President Lindsay by himself, have the standing to define the College's mission. As Chris Nelson recently wrote, the Faculty and Assembly have for decades labored against "almost insuperable challenges" to save the College itself and greatly enrich its incomparable instructional program. But President Lindsay turns his back to this history, revealing just days ago a proposed mission statement restating "guideposts" that have been resoundingly rejected by the internal community and alumni both.

More trying still, President Lindsay presumes to use his mission statement as a test of the Faculty's continuing commitment to the College. He has indicated to us that if the Board adopts his statement, he would ask us individually to confirm our support of it. The implied alternative was to seek employment elsewhere. Let us be clear: we reject with one voice such tests of our loyalty to Shimer College or to President Lindsay.

President Lindsay has maintained that he wants only to clarify the College's mission, not to change it. An unsympathetic redrafting of the entire mission statement is not a clarification. Further, his intransigent insistence on the rightness of his views on education, even in the face of months of considerate attempts to qualify them and to offer alternatives, only betrays how little he understands or adheres to the College's principles for cooperative dialogue.

Such betrayals strike at the heart of our educational mission. Students complain rightly that they are admonished just to study, while their studious efforts to defend and clarify their sense of the College's mission are repeatedly dismissed. And we hear more and more from alumni troubled by the lack of harmony gripping an institution they helped build on mutual support. For our part, the Faculty has grown increasingly dismayed at the President's and even Board's seeming relunctance to affirm our necessary authority over the College's core educational program and to assure the security and freedom we must have to protect and enhance it.

We understand entirely the Board's need to support the powers necessary to the President. But to define the College's mission unilaterally and without board approval is not one of these powers. We therefore state again our unanimous backing of the Assembly's present will to uphold the current mission statement. And we trust the Board will help in enlisting President LIindsay to this bgeneral will for the greater and lasting good of the College.

The Faculty of Shimer College

[version circulated at 2/23 SSA meeting]

Information Coming

I'm working together on gather information and will post it as soon as possible, this afternoon in fact. In the meantime any current students or alumnae who would like to be added to the blog to contribute to this discussion, please send me an email at saradevil at gmail com and I will add you to the blog. It really does seem like this current debacle could be a lot more damning for Shimer long term than the move to Chicago.

Current Shimer Changes, Mission Statement, New President, etc

Via Denise Lane:

Hello! I'm writing you to make sure you, as Shimer alumns, have heard about the current goings-on at the college. I'm worried about the state of the college, as are faculty, students, staff, and other alumns I've spoken to.

The college is at a crossroads, and if the current president, Tom Lindsay, has his way, some faculty and students are allegedly considering walking out.

THIS SUNDAY, November 15th at 4:00pm is an Assembly meeting at the College, which all alumns are invited to attend (we are a non voting part of the Assembly, which means we can speak). At this meeting the Ethos of the College is being defended against a true attempt to significantly alter Shimer's mission. If you are in the Chicago area and can attend - PLEASE DO. I have more specific info I can forward you, just let me know.

Tom Lindsay wants to remake the college and his tactics frighten me. He fired Elaine, the Head of Admissions, without discussing it with anybody in the community, and in my view, without showing proper cause. (Besides which she was being more successful at bringing in the numbers than Shimer has *ever* seen before.) This has current staff members fearing for their jobs.

He then replaced her with a woman who was a student at his past university, who does not have the experience to hold the job. Further, he hired her against the Committee of the Assembly who had thrown out her application twice.

Both Lindsay and his new hire are not participatory in the dialogical method of Shimer, meaning to say I've heard the current community is very frustrated with his lack of listening. This concern is also held by faculty members.

The Board of Trustees does not stop him because it has ballooned by a large addition of *his* friends. The Shimer faculty and students who are on the Board have been ignored and yelled at in the meetings.

Apparently he wants to "water down" the mission of Shimer, and this Sunday's assembly meeting has an agenda item to specifically strengthen the mission instead. Please attend this if you can. I know that current Board members are planning on attending, the voices of alumns (read, possible donors in their mind) mean a lot!

If you are interested in knowing more, I suggest you sign up for "Listen" the Shimer email list which any member can post to, there has been a lot of back and forth on these issues on there. Also the President and the Board of Trustees are on the list as well.

If you are interested in more info, let me know. Otherwise thanks for reading this long. I truly believe in Shimer and I don't want a Neo-Conservative stonewalling and taking over just because he and his friends have a lot of money. Please help.

Thanks!!
:D

For those Shimerians who need to get on to Listen to receive the emails: lists.shimer.edu choose the first "this", choose "listen", and create a logon. It will email a confirmation. Let me know if you have any problems.

On the Road to Shimer

I didn't want to bump the prime news but I wanted to share. ~S

The day prior was spent on and in Lake Michigan on the Indiana side. This was followed by the typically early wake up and some more sleeping and laying about and then a brunch-ish breakfast. On the drive up to Chicago, returning to the fabulous Ms. Skimmel's, Sam turned and asked "do you have anything you want to do on the South Side?"

There are lots of questions that one might enjoy hearing asked about Chicago. "Want to go drinking?" "Want to go eat?" "Want to go shopping?" "Want to go to the lake?" "Want to go listen to some music?" "Want to hit Evanston?" "Want to drive LSD?" "Want to go to a Museum?" "Want to go to a game?" "Want to go to boys town?" "Want to hit Belmont?" "Want to go to the Parthenon?" "Want to hit the aquarium?" "Want to go to a midnight marathon of Kubrick movies at the Music Box?" These are all perfectly acceptable questions to ask someone when you are heading in or out of Chicago. Asking "Anything you want to do on the South Side?" is just one of those question that would make any salted Chicagoan give you the look that says "'Da fuck?"

I'm not saying that there aren't some interesting things on the South Side of Chicago. Hyde Park is on the South Side of Chicago and aside from the Seminary Co-op you have some fabulous places to eat. The Dixie Kitchen, for one and there is that Jamaican place that does the jerk food name of which escapes me. And Hyde Park is pretty. It's a very pretty little part of Chicago all tucked around the UIC. Of course, you don't really want to be caught on the south side in the ten block radius that surrounds Hyde Park, Hyde Park being an island of suburban decadence nestled in the dark underbelly of Chicago.

And while I should have just given the "Da fuck?" look. I instead, asked a question.

"Where are we, again?" I had not been paying attention.

"Stony Island, just past 95^th."

"Huh."

There is thinking.

">We could go to Shimer."

There are many a time I have often dreamt of going to Shimer, but rarely would I have thought to utter a response to a question like "Anything you want to do on the south side?" with the answer "We could go to Shimer."

But I did.

And we did.

Sam drove and we looked for signs for the IIT campus where our school had relocated. No longer really our school, I felt. More The School, the Shimer of my dreams now being nothing more then a collection of random memories for buildings that are occupied by people I will never meet. My school is gone, replaced instead by The School which has been relocated to somewhere on the South Side of Chicago. And now in a rented car, with a big orange dog, I was traveling to visit The School and I was not really sure why.

Curiosity more than anything else, perhaps. A confirmation of my fears. A longing. A chance to see something that had been missed. The sense of belonging to something again, even if it wasn't really mine. Shimer. Shimer. I dream a dream of Shimer.

It took a few minutes and some searching but signs were located, a general direction established, and a parking lot was found. The car was parked and the boy, the dog, and the girl got out and crossed the street to head towards a neatly clipped and manicured lawn with a few sprawling trees on a hot summer day. This was Shimer.

My brain railed against it.

This was not Shimer.

And yet, this was Shimer.

We walked together to the front entrance only to find it closed, so we turned down some sidewalks and found a path leading around to the back of the building, where we saw a sign. Shimer College. The door was propped open with a wooden doorstop. And for some reason it screamed to me that this was perfectly Shimerian. We walked through the door, our little ménage a troupe and found that the first thing to catch our eye was a bookshelf. "Take a book." Being that we are in fact true to our calling we stopped and looked through every title on that shelf to find what that might appeal. I picked up a tome on Education and Capitalism and regretted having not brought a book with me to leave. We walked in and found at the front desk a very attractive young girl full of piercings and I found this very comforting. It settled my heart for some reason that there would be some girl working admissions who reminded me of all the pierced out lovelies of my own Shimer generation. She was an amalgamation of myself, and Caila, and Psyche, and Layla, and Natalie (a little of Jason Stahl, but in a feminine sort of way) and a dozen others I could name. She had that sense about her and I recognized it. A feeling, a subtle shift in attitude, an extenuation of grace: Shimerain.

We asked for catalogs but the new ones were not available. She said hello to us, to the dog. We asked if we could go up. "Visiting Alums. Just want to see."

"Sure, sure. There's an elevator around the corner."

"Can we take the dog? He's also an alum."

"I don't think it's a problem." So the three of us found the elevator around the corner and went up to the second floor were Shimer, all the buildings collapsed into a small space, is now housed. The doors opened on a library. And this was somehow comforting. My heart was beating fast; thrumming pounding. Because as strange as this place was, as new as I knew it to be, it was in some small way still a part of myself. And that part of me that is full of Shimer and that will never be able to let Shimer, the education, the people, go; that part of me was called by this place. And that part of me responded to it like a home, an old friend.

The floor was cool and dark, most of the lights were off. Some of the doors were opened but most were locked. We walked through silently. Not speaking, just taking it in. There was a lounge called Cinderella and in the lounge there was a painting I recognized. I used to set up coffee service under that painting. It hung in Prairie House lounge, the tree in a field of muted colors. I talked under that painting. I read Hobbes under that painting. I bumped into Ariella (the littlest Amazon) one night doing a mailing for no readily apparent reason under that painting. She talked to me about getting paper cuts on her tongue. I'd once attended a breakfast where Steve blasted Jonathan Rickman as he served. I'd sat in this very room on many an after-hours night alone playing piano to ease my heart; to make me feel alive. It was not surrounded by the place I remembered, but somehow it felt right. It was a piece of my past and it pulled this place together and made it Shimer.

A few doors were open to classrooms so we let ourselves in. The classrooms were named names that brought just as much to my mind as the paintings. There was Infinity classroom where I drank cognac with my Hum 2 class lead by Sklar while reading The Brother's K. Wolf and Mas got wasted during the class. In the end Wolf walked singing at the top of his lungs towards the train to make sure Mas got on to Chicago where he needed to be.

There was Pi (or was it radical 2), you know the room at the top of the stairs on the right. Where the sound system was, a room where I had discussions with Nancy Rose and where David Shiner got so pissed after a day of silence while discussing the Iliad in IS 5 that he actually walked out on us. I can't really blame him for that as the class was truly abysmal that day. I blame the grayness of winter and the fact that at least seven out of twelve people had not done the reading. I do admit though that at the end of the course I found the Iliad was by far a much more engaging read then the Odyssey and have become quite enamored with it.

I was looking into rooms that were not the classrooms I attended, not the rooms with the high vaulted ceilings, the explosive halogen lamps burning last years dead mosquitoes; rooms thick with ancient smoke that no manner of non-smoking policy would ever remove; rooms with memories of a dozen other Shimerians before me who could argue that this place was there's; it wasn't 438, it wasn't Hutchins, but it was somehow still Shimer and it still felt like home. The octagonal tables finished where the paintings left off and I stroked the side of one and thought of some names and smiled to think these tables were still here.

It wasn't my Shimer.

There was no Shimer-Henge. There was no quad. There were no crappy pea gravel paths to cut a swath through the middle and connect buildings. There would be no trudging through the snow to make classes from one place to another. There was no gym basement to play pool in. There was no coffee shop to move from building to building to building. But there was a Young Chang piano that I had played till my fingers bled. There were pictures I remember staring at when my attention wavered after a night of too much reading and too little sleep. There were names that were familiar. There was Shimer. And it is Shimer. We walked through quiet, almost reverent, alone and opening doors and peaking in to see what we could see. A thousand ghosts and memories in every corner of this building that I had never been in before; all of it telling me that this was still Shimer.

It is still Shimer.

Of all the people who were angry about the move, and of the most stubborn, I did not think I could find anything redeeming in this place. So I made a pilgrimage to The School to be angry and to fuel my distaste and my rage. And it didn't happen.

It's not the same. I won't try to argue that it is. It's merely Shimer. Seeing it there whole and intact stole all my hatred from me. It's still Shimer.

The boy, the dog, and I walked down the stairs to find the Nubian pierced goddess of Admissions who was working on a Saturday. We asked for bookmarks and she gave us a stack; bookmarks to be used to promote Shimer, to keep it alive, to put new people and new memories into this new building. I want to keep it alive for the most selfish reason of all, because knowing it is there in some incarnation is easier then letting it go.

The journey the rest of the way north was spent silent for a while. Both of us lost in thoughts of our own Shimer, a little world that had been created there. Then came Skimmel's and coffee and the discussion of what we can do. "Anything you want to do on the South Side?" Yeah, yeah, there is.