Having observed Senate decision-making all semester, perhaps the most frustrating thing I saw was how little the "liberal arts," or a comparable higher value, was mentioned. All decisions were made based on some specific and minute end (to be honest, though, this end was often unclear) and were rarely based on a larger purpose or mission. Previously, I’ve mentioned that I think the job of the Senate should be to protect the students of Pomona College and to protect the liberal arts at Pomona College. Instead of adopting these goals (or any similar goals) as a mission statement that would drive all of their actions, the Senate acted in an often haphazard manner, shirking their responsibilities to the students and to the liberal arts. Last week, however, the Senate finally did something that worked toward these goals, passing a resolution that declared the Senate’s opposition to the Claremont University Consortium (CUC) due to the CUC’s divergence from "the liberal educational values of Pomona College."

Of course, the ASPC Senate is not the only body on this campus that has a responsibility to the liberal arts. While their recent actions are to be commended, support for the health of the liberal arts here in Claremont deserves deeper investigation.

The "liberal arts" is an oft-misunderstood concept. To some, the "liberal" part is taken all too literally and "liberal arts" becomes synonymous with "social responsibility." Social responsibility is a great value to take from an education, but colleges are mistaken if they think that indoctrinating people to become activist members of the Green Party validates them as an institution that teaches the liberal arts. On the other end, those who taken Allen Bloom to heart and think that "liberal arts" is synonymous with "the classics" are also badly mistaken. Having read dozens of books does not make one educated in the liberal arts tradition. (If pushed, we could all name colleges in Claremont that fall into either of these areas.)

The liberal arts is a pedagogy that relies as much on friendship and open conversation as on classroom learning and reading. To make the most of a liberal arts education (in fact, to have any claim to a liberal arts education), the student must combine intellectual activity in the classroom with open and frank intellectual activity outside of the classroom. Any effort to quiet that outside communication, by defining how it can happen or what it can include, is antithetical to the liberal arts.

Everybody who was smart enough to attend Associate Professor of Politics John Seery’s Last Lecture last week saw two opposing forces at work. On the one hand, Seery was given an opportunity to stand in front of a packed Frank Blue Room and say essentially whatever he wanted. In his previous Last Lecture, Seery talked about his love for Pomona College, pointing out that, unlike Amherst College, we don’t have any preppy assholes. This time, Seery chose to draw attention to our administration’s opposition to free speech and the faculty’s weakness when it comes to supporting the liberal arts. (Copies of the speech, available in the Politics Department office, are an informative read on this topic of administration conservatism.)

While Seery is most likely right-on about administration policies and faculty spinelessness, he showed unfounded optimism in Pomona’s student body. For some reason, Seery thinks that Pomona’s students care about protecting the liberal arts, ignoring many positions that students have taken against the free communication of ideas in a public space. Most recently, I witnessed a discomforting amount of criticism of student protestors at the CUC building. On top of all of the informal complaining about the

disruption, even The Student Life ran an Editorial Board on April 6 from Conor Friedersdorf in which he complained that protestors were being unnecessarily disruptive about the Bernard Field Station and ignoring more global issues. Implicit in this piece is that protesters should shut up and let the rest of us get on with our lives. Friedersdorf showed an amazing disrespect for the liberal arts by failing to recognize the voice of his fellow students and denying them their channels of open communication and debate.

Also enemies of the liberal arts are people who oppose the Dynamics of Difference and Power proposal on the grounds that talking about these issues will somehow exacerbate them (which is not to say that this is the only reason for opposing the DDP proposal). These people wish to silence discussion on issues that are important to all of us, and the real victim is the liberal arts. Are we supposed to disregard issues based on their political volatility rather than on their intellectual and educational merit? Surely not, but that’s what these DDP opponents would have us do. Their argument shows no thought of the liberal arts, only thought of protecting their own comfort levels.

The Senate has been on the right track in this issue of late, with most of their debate over the Keck Graduate Institute focusing on the integrity of Pomona’s liberal arts. Most recently, Grayson Schaffer ’01 introduced the resolution decrying the actions of CUC, drawing attention to CUC’s lack of dedication to the liberal arts as well as their abuse of student protestors and corporatist organization. While not stating it outright, the Senate showed an understanding of the connection between open communication and the liberal arts.

Unfortunately, John Seery and the ASPC Senate are not able to protect the liberal arts on their own. All bodies at Pomona need much more dedication to a real, liberal arts-oriented mission statement, something that can be fostered in very real ways. First, if the liberal arts rely upon an exchange of ideas and discussion among both friends and enemies, Pomona needs more truly public space, in which students are forced into discussion. Walker Beach, Marston Quad, and the Smith Campus Center Courtyard are not adequate substitutes to public living space (like the Lawry common rooms) where students truly live with each other. Second, all policy debate needs to have protection of the liberal arts as the end goal. The administration needs to ignore financial liability and talk about the liberal arts when making decisions, the Senate needs to forget about scheduling difficulties and start considering the liberal arts. Third, both the students and the administration need to start showing more openness to discussion. The administration should not allow our students to be arrested for making controversial ideas heard, nor should other students jeer about the smallness of protesters who are seriously attacking issues of the local environment and of the decision-making policies at this college.

The liberal arts are the foundation to our education, but we must not take them for granted. The liberal arts should always be at the front of our minds, especially when making decisions or opinions about the future of Pomona.