We’re Different: A Commentary on Warren Wilson’s Lack of Community Inspired by Recent Events
Ellie Teweles | May 4, 2023
On Warren Wilson College’s (WWC) website, one of the first things students will see is a link to our “Philosophy and Mission” page that claims “We’re Different.”
Under, it reads:
“Curious what it’s like to balance a sharp academic focus with roll-up-your-sleeves experience backed by a fierce obligation to serve your community?”
Most of what attracted me and (I’ll boldly say) other students to this institution was the highly advertised emphasis on community, work ethic, radical politics and investment in the future. The work program, Warren Wilson’s pride and joy, is meant to spearhead this ideology of work, engagement and support. Although it was an exaggeration, I often joked with my friends at other colleges that I was not attending an institution like they were; I was attending a commune. This naive idealized version of Wilson that many students have — or, had — ignores some painfully obvious realities:
Wilson is an institution like any other. Wilson is not a utopian leftist commune.
Wilson does not exist within a vacuum. America’s politics, oppressive systems, cultural conflict, and biases all perpetuate within this school, despite the environment’s illusion of a sequestered blissful bubble.
Wilson is a Predominantly White Institution (PWI).
The work program does not inherently simulate collaboration and community, and it is not equatable to the experiences of the blue-collar, working-class American.
Just because the campus is small and we all live near each other, does not mean we have community. Community requires constant action, engagement, work and sacrifice.
On the 26th of April, students in many classrooms were informed that a custodial worker employed by Wilson had recently quit because of repeated instances of underappreciation, ignorance, bigotry and abuse.
The final straw that caused this woman to quit occurred when a student deliberately threw trash at her while she was cleaning in one of the Vining dorms. Learning about this aggressive violation of basic human respect absolutely horrified me.
She wishes to remain anonymous in all conversations about the incident. This woman’s first language is Spanish and she is a woman of color. In addition to the Vining incident, a few weeks earlier, students had abducted a bunch of chickens and locked them in the Boon building as a prank. Not only was this act of animal cruelty enacted at a school that prides itself on respecting the environment, when the chickens defecated throughout the building, this same woman was again forced to clean up after ignorant students who did not consider the consequences of their own actions.
I only know small details about these two incidents. However, I am aware of other occurrences of mistreatment of the custodial staff, and general violations from the student body at Wilson.
Examples of this behavior include throwing up in bathrooms and leaving it for the staff to clean up, dying hair in the bathrooms and staining the appliances/not cleaning the stains, leaving broken glass/alcohol/rotting food in communal places, leaving used condoms in public spaces, stealing from other students, leaving copious amounts of trash in public, dumping food down bathroom sinks, abandoning dirty dishes to fester in public kitchens and general acts of perceived selfish carelessness, etc.
The happenings listed above might be expected from any other college campus, but it is more disappointing at a place that loves to cite a wonderful community spirit as its crown jewel. Initially, I was very surprised that something so malicious and cruel as throwing garbage at a custodian could be a recurring problem at a “work college,” but upon further inspection and critical thinking as a collective, we should not be shocked.
The position of being a college student is one of immense privilege, regardless of current economic status or other positioning. Yes, absolutely, there are nuances to this status such as race, gender and other marginalized identities. However, attending college (even a small place like Wilson) affords a student the status of obtaining a college degree.
According to Barbara Ehrenreich, a college degree acts as the main entrance barrier into more privileged parts of the middle class and to earning a comfortable income. Reports showed that in 2018, 63% of all jobs in the US required at least some secondary education.
Comfortable, middle-class positioning is primarily reserved for those who are able to attend college and beyond, resulting in blue-collar jobs being the main employment available for those without a degree. Since, in the U.S., college is not considered to be a fundamental right for all adults, and since non-diploma-holding adults in working-class jobs face discrimination, humiliation, and often dangerous working conditions, attending college unequivocally gives students some privilege.
Wilson is supposed to be a member of the Work Colleges Consortium: “We’re Different.” Despite this, I feel there is a huge disconnect from reality among most of the staff and students here in regard to our community. At almost every event I have attended at Wilson, whether it is Orientation, Work Day, or leadership workshops, students are constantly bombarded with language of “Community! Engagement! Community! Empathy! COMMUNITY!”
In many ways, the word “community” has become a type of buzzword — but what does community really mean? What does it entail? A community can technically describe a group of people living in the same area with a particular characteristic in common, which does describe this place. However, students and staff might find this definition lacking. They likely would rather see “community” defined by fellowship, safety, support, engagement, sacrifice and selflessness. This does not encapsulate how the college functions. In some ways made glaringly obvious by recent events, this campus is not the supportive community we all make it out to be.
It seems like the work program is intended to automatically foster a communal and work-centered environment. Despite this hope, I think that the work crew participation alone does not inherently instill students with these core values, or the mindset and motivation for a supportive community. What the work program has the potential to accomplish can only be achieved by active, critical engagement with how college culture — even at socially-conscious, progressive liberal arts institutions like this one — reproduces inequalities. There also seems to be a subconscious belief that the work program naturally affords students from non-working class backgrounds an authentic insight into the working-class experience. This is obviously not true. Getting your hands dirty 8 or 16 hours a week does not make you understand class disparity and stratification if you have not experienced it.
Many upperclassmen, staff and alumni have shared sentiments of Wilson “not being what it used to be.” MWGA, Make Wilson Great Again!
While it’s very true that COVID-19 forced the school to cut back on a lot of programs that made this campus so special, this popular idealized version of the college ignores its less flattering aspects. The custodial work that the college now outsources to the Harper Cleaning Group used to be done by students on a custodial work crew — Heavy Duty Crew.
The idea of a Wilson where students are actively responsible for running the school used to be more of a reality. However, I am not sure that simply bringing back a student-run custodial crew would be the solution to all of our problems. It also explicitly states on the Harper Cleaning Group website that they are a minority-owned business, which does make their service relationship with our majority White population very complex. So how do we approach this conflict?
A paper by anthropologist Jane F. Collier examined the differing narratives of conflict between American students and Maya people in Zinacantan, Mexico. Collier documented how Americans felt that collective thoughts and feelings on an instance of conflict were what legitimized something as being wrong or harmful, instead of the wrongdoer actively not fulfilling their basic human obligations.
The American students in the study also failed to consider what social circumstances influenced the wrongdoer’s actions, instead viewing individual transgression as thoughtless and selfish (the two being synonymous) rather than as a deliberate expression of power dynamics reproduced by culture. A narrative is established that if the perpetrator knew that their actions would make people feel bad, then they wouldn’t have done it in the first place. The endemic American fixation with individual punishment reflects this; the idea that, if an individual transgressor is punished, it resolves the situation and provides catharsis.
Though we would all like to know who did this, this knowledge will not solve the underlying cultural motivations for this type of behavior, nor will it prevent it from occurring in the future.
One example of this dynamic from Collier’s paper was a female student who heard sexist jokes from an older male professor. When asked to discuss what the professor’s reasoning was for doing something wrong, the woman explained it as, “not thinking of how the women felt” instead of seeing sexism as a deliberate expression of power.
According to Collier’s analysis, Americans tended to use a cost-benefit model of involvement: First a description of the victim/narrator's feelings, and second, an analysis of the risks and advantages involved in action. “Will it change anything? Will it take too much time? Will I face backlash? Is it worth it for me?”
We also commonly take passive solutions to everyday conflict like emails or notes that allow the wrongdoers to be confronted in a non-obtrusive way that avoids direct conflict and leaves the problem unfixed: “Some people haven't been cleaning up after themselves.” Americans — according to Collier — often see conflict as begun with those who are affected calling the wrongdoer out, instead of believing that the wrongdoer inherently creates the conflict with their actions, even before they are confronted. This broadly outlines a dynamic in which we fail to address conflict before it escalates and becomes a “situation”.
In many ways, this was the way that the Vining dorm situation was handled before it escalated.
This “I don't want to get involved” mentality is actively hindering us from fostering a better community. Yes, it sucks that you did not make that mess. Yes, it is unfair— life is, in many ways, unfair and we have to dedicate ourselves to trying to make it better. We are a work college for pete’s sake! We need to be willing to do a little extra work for the good of those around us. Collectivism requires extra responsibility be placed on all of us. Assuming that wrongdoers are thoughtless, instead of highlighting existing power dynamics, excuses inaction on the part of the collective.
I encourage readers to be respectful and not to pry or seek this woman out as she clearly stated that she wishes to remain anonymous. I strongly believe that people who actively disrespect custodian staff like this should not go without consequences or accountability. However — this is a deep seated problem within WWC that will not be solved by the punishment theater of an individual. Discovering the identity of the individual culprit, though cathartic, will not change underlying dynamics of privilege, and may even serve to socially distract from more important uncomfortable, but necessary, conversations.
Students “playing detective,” and searching for the culprit also runs the risk of exposing the affected person’s identity who, again, does not want to be made public.
Vining’s physical construction may provide an additional reason that the dorm is especially problematic and gross. Many Vining residents have voiced contempt with Vining’s prison-like structure; many note that the barely one-person-wide halls discourage conversation and neighborly relations. The construction of the Vining buildings actively discourages communal conversation and space, which may be one reason why the single common room in Vining C is abused on a level beyond any other dorm.
A Vining resident email exchange left students bitter because they were notified that a $25 charge would be made to their student accounts as a response to this situation, as well as the general cleanliness issues. This new development amplified students' investment in the discussion, as the conflict directly cost them instead of affecting them in less tangible ways. ( I do understand that financial concerns are a valid reason for outrage, and also that the funds will likely go toward school repairs rather than be paid directly to the affected person.) Some students voiced more passionately the desire to reveal the responsible individual because of this. Others voiced wishes for the college/students to publicly apologize to the affected custodian.
Prior to the trash-throwing incident coming to a public head as a symbolic example of a larger issue, students neither suggested that they should organize a cleaning party to ease the load off of Harper workers, nor did they take collective action (except for complaining about the conditions of Vining). Notably, Vining residents did take some of these steps after this situation occurred; On Tuesday May 2 pamphlets were put up scheduling a Vining C cleaning party on May 6 at 4:00 p.m, which I applaud. Long term solutions based on persistent action and reconstruction are more sustainable than community accountability enforced by sporadic bursts of outrage. I hope that readers who are passionate about this subject are able to think critically and reflect on what is the best way to go about this issue as a collective.