Twice a year, Academy Events provide the community an opportunity to experience a thought-provoking performance. More often than not, students’ negative attitudes spoil this event. However, we should appreciate the fact that we can assemble as an entire school and engage in post-performance dialogue.
Our lack of appreciation for the presentation stems from the Academy’s failure to educate us on the upcoming show. The Academy should make a greater effort to emphasize the significance of each event.
In light of Ailey II, a two-minute video is not a sufficient preview of a two-hour performance. If the community had been as prepared for Ailey II as it was for W.S. Merwin’s reading, perhaps there would have been a greater level of enthusiasm.
Regardless of the extent to which we were prepared, as students, we should have the maturity to respect the performance as well as the efforts that go into educating the community.
Since The Scroll, in an unprecedented effort to silence student conversation, has blocked the comment function on all articles having to do with David Koch and money in politics in general, those of us in the Deerfield community who think that the community could benefit from dialogue on the advantages and drawbacks of associating ourselves with David Koch and his history of perpetrating and attempting to avoid prosecution for environmental crimes, manipulating science and scientific journalism for political purposes and personal gain, financing the radical American right, bribing federal and supreme court justices to find in favor of his subsidiaries, and a host of other actions that violate Deerfield’s most deeply held morals must resort to instigating debate in unusual places viz. articles that have nothing to do with the issue at hand.
For more on the censorship of student conversation and the complicity of faculty members (whose job it ought to be to empower students to eloquently and honestly express themselves) in this, please see the below post.
http://sweptundertheseal.wordpress.com/2012/05/05/alumnus-writes-on-koch/#more-261