Birmingham Southern College - Southern Accent Yearbook (Birmingham, AL)

Page 13 text:

It is this internal burden, engendered and nurtured in soli- tude, which inevitably sends a few home before the work is done. But each of us, too, labors under an external burden that is very much a part of this college and constitutes its big- gest problem: Administrationism. Administrationism means that total fascination with antiseptic account books and impersonal grade point averages which characterizes second floor Munger. It ' s what gives you the feeling that they would gladly sacrifice your present or future happiness, career — even burn your body — just to keep the books in balance. Administrationism is what causes your throat to constrict and your hands to get sweaty when you stand there trying to schedule a class or find out how many hours and quality points you need. You know that its not a question of if anything is wrong; just how wrong. It is really amazing that such a tremendous body of regula- tions and procedures can accrue around the task of directing one thousand lives. After awhile, you actually begin to think of yourself as a being composed of polarities of obedience and non-obedience caught amid the subtle manifestations of the gap between the leaders and the masses: the sidewalks that don ' t go where anyone wants to walk, but serve only to awkwardly circumnavigate chain-guarded areas where grass seed have been spread on the rocks; the convocations called simply because every week has a Wednesday; the fact that the college employs someone who zealously tickets unstickered cars on a campus where parking has never been a problem. There is a deeper schism, too. One occasioned not by lack of communication but by absence of common purpose. One that fosters evasiveness, furtiveness, and a get by attitude among us, and is evidenced by the fact that so many officials work so tirelessly at holding us to a system of behavior which has little relevance to our education and which many have found personally unfeasible. And so the college contributes its part to our seasonal with- drawal and introspection. And Southern can really expect little loyalty toward the institution itself as long as it adheres to a policy of rules made to fit the occasion and after the fact. Little loyalty will come as long as navigating among the ex- isting rules, policies, and practices continues to remind us of daily going to the same stone wall, backing off ten equal paces and daily running headlong into that wall.

Page 15 text:

Occasionally, even here, a person may realize that there is a remedy for that lump of loneliness, frustration, and impa- tience which lies day and night in your stomach; that makes you want to scream obscenities at noon in the cafeteria or drive far away for a few days, just get a motel room a ' nd wonder if you ' ve been missed. But every now and then an- other person comes swimming out of their kin, and the hazy dream of two lives merge into a new definition. The meeting needn ' t be beautiful, the dialogue cool, nor anyone particular- ly dashing; the only requirement is another person real enough at that particular moment to snap you back out of yourself. The story isn ' t new, and we have no special claim to it. Prob- ably the script is pretty much the same everywhere at any time, but the special joy of giving a mutual damn, of a warm and opposite body makes the routine bearable. Just having another human point to aim at can give you a new courage and flair for life.