Gala inaccurately portrays Hillsdale

The black velvet curtains that walled off the snack bar last week elicited a range of responses from students, many of whom felt they were being hidden from view for the benefit of the Gala attendees.

While the snack bar curtains may have covered up a few students, the Founders Campaign as a whole seems to be painting a picture of Hillsdale that obscures much of what the college truly is.

The Gala's main tent, with its three massive chandeliers and seven-foot tall ice sculpture of central hall, transformed Hillsdale's quad into an elegant dining room and reception hall. Inside the tent, Hillsdale became something different as well. In the midst of the ceremony and celebration, it seemed that the donors, trustees and celebrities shared a political and moral vision of the college that few students would recognize as the place where they attend classes each day.

The Hillsdale of the Founders Campaign is little more than a morally conservative institution that refuses government funding, shaping the future of the United States by turning out politically idealistic students.

Nowhere was this one-sided perspective more apparent than in the Founders Campaign video. It featured a few clips of campus, but the faces of celebrities such as William F. Buckley, Jr., Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas and former Attorney General Edwin Meese dominated the screen as they discussed Hillsdale's history and ideals.

When the camera made its way into the classroom, it focused on mock classes in which students recited lengthy speeches about why Hillsdale was different from other colleges.

Such an abstract and idealized portrait of the college isn't necessarily unattractive or inaccurate. Many of us were attracted to Hillsdale because it advertised itself in such a way. But after four years or even four months of college, we see that Hillsdale's political idealism has a fairly small effect on daily campus life. We stay here not because of the college's moral conservatism, but because we are getting an excellent liberal arts education. We stay here because of our professors, our friends, our activities. When we graduate, we will be educated citizens, but very few of us will be leaving on a mission to change the political structure of the U.S.

The Gala, orchestrated as it was by people who do not interact with us students on a daily basis, showed us that there is much more to Hillsdale than what happens in the classroom, and we are certainly grateful to those who do such an excellent job of keeping the college running. But there is much more to Hillsdale than what the Gala portrayed, and this is what concerns us about the Founders Campaign.

One of the reasons Hillsdale refuses government funding is so that it won't have to take orders from someone with a different idea of what a college should be. But by launching a fundraising campaign that creates an unreal vision of Hillsdale, the college certainly seems to be inviting a similar problem.

Those who respond to the Founders Campaign video, whether they are students or donors, will be doing so with an idea of the college that doesn't correspond with its day-to-day existence.

Their vision of the college isn't a problem in itself. The problem is that they will be doing what they can to make it a reality. We can already see this happening in the planned Graduate School of Statesmanship and the newly-endowed chair in U.S. Constitution, as well as the planned American Constitution class.

Do we want students, or donors, supporting Hillsdale simply because they believe in the college's political idealism and moral conservatism, or do we want to recruit those who will strive to improve the education available here?

Hillsdale is a college, not a political think tank. We should do all we can to keep it that way.