In a rather appalling turn, students peacefully protesting the treatment and compensation of the campus food service workers were arrested last night during a sit-in on the campus quad. The students were calling upon campus administrators to end Emory’s contract with Sodexo, contractor for Emory’s food services — a company that “has been identified by several independent human rights organizations as systematically violating the rights of its workers” (according to the Wheel). This decision to brute force the students into compliance is upsetting, but sadly unsurprising.

I graduated from Emory’s undergraduate business school in 2008. During my time there, I was actively involved in numerous student organizations including the campus newspaper, student government, APO (a service fraternity), the choral program and other groups. Despite giving my all and pouring everything I could into that school, I found at each turn Emory’s administration to be caustic and resistant to any contrary opinions. (A important exception would be the largely separate business school which has an amazing and supportive administration.)

Emory is a school with great financial resources, touting a lofty mission of dedication to “service to humanity” — that is tragically run by small-minded people, cowering in their mediocrity. They’re people who were designed for middle-management, and they’re breeding a student body that will only succeed in spite of their efforts. For all the lip-service that public service gets, in the end, Emory caters to pragmatism, nepotism and complacency. They pander to improving the rankings instead of the school itself, a short-sighted and ultimately doomed endeavor.

I walked into the offices of our school newspaper during my sophomore year one morning to discover that the school’s administration had forced the General Manager of our school newspaper to resign because of internal disagreements, and she was no longer allowed on campus. As someone who was personally close to Eileen and had been both inspired and mentored by her, I found it to be an extremely disturbing and demoralizing event. Similar, though less dramatic events, littered my various experiences at Emory. Small-scale corruption breeds large-scale disenchantment. I entered Emory as an idealist, lost it, and have struggling to regain my idealism ever since.

The problem is, everyone knows. The apathy in the student body is palpable. School spirit is non-existent. Deep down, students want college to be an idealistic and inspiring experience. Instead, they find a school that is more concerned with public image than the true pursuit of knowledge or a serious dedication to service. But kids shrug it off, and drink away their college years instead, or they resign to play the game, learning the lesson that mediocrity — supported by connections and financial resources — can get you far enough with minimal effort.

I’m not surprised in the least that Emory, once ranked #9 in its hey-day has now fallen and is struggling to stay #20. What Emory doesn’t understand is that you can only dress up a turd for so long before people start to notice its stench. If you want people to think you value knowledge and dedication to service, YOU ACTUALLY HAVE TO DO IT. Until Emory truly commits to these ideas in a substantive way, it will never be the great university it so desperately, desperately wants to be. The students who are great, who will someday be great, are searching for inspiration and encouragement of their potential. They’ll pass up Emory’s pretty facade for a school that speaks to their ideas and values in an honest way. Instead, we’ll continue to attract more and more pragmatic, small, over-privileged students who will never bring Emory the national recognition it clearly craves and needs in order to attract other potentially great students.

Crushing the spirit of your student body will not breed courageous students who will inspire others. You’ll get more self-centered children, living off trust funds and getting plush, but ultimately unimportant jobs through connections. Administrators that spend all their time fighting their students will push away and demoralize those who might have been catalyzed to achieve more.

I recall a casual lunch towards the end of my junior year with the Director of Student Activities where I brought up a hypothetical scenario of the newspaper becoming independent from the school, like many collegiate newspapers (Yale Daily News, Stanford Daily, etc.) — where I was brusquely informed that the university would not tolerate “renegade” organizations and would take legal action were we to use Emory’s name.

I’m not going to engage in an assessment of whether or not administrators were legally in the right in arresting the students. Even as a law school student, I would still tell you that the law can only take you so far. Just because you can, doesn’t mean you should. I learned this in second grade.

Until Emory begins to embody the ideas it parrots, Emory will never get a cent from me, and I would never allow my children to attend. Today and many days, I’m ashamed to call Emory my alma mater.

The AJC article on the arrests is here.