Letter From An Editor: Why Nobody Wants to Work Anymore

Dear readers of the Quest,

In my role as Queditor, I have tried my best to keep my opinions to myself (with the exception of my most inconsequential takes on fashion and music) and focus on platforming the words of others. With my retirement and/or death looming ahead of me, I feel newly empowered to give my two cents on the state of the (dis)union that is Reed College. 

As I write this, the current student body election has yet to reach quorum. In the time between writing and publishing this article, quorum may be reached, but the slow pace of this election speaks to a longer tradition of Reedies lacking confidence in their government. This election has a singular candidate each for president and vice president. In addition, there are three Senate candidates when five senator positions originally needed to be filled. In this light, the no quorum votes which I have anecdotally heard circulating make a lot of sense as a response to what students see as a lack of choice in their representatives. 

However, the dearth of Senate candidates reflects a larger issue and it should force us to examine why so many students feel unmotivated to participate in Senate. If my anecdotal experience tells me anything, people do not know what—if anything—Senate does, or why it’s important, much less aspirational. Senate should be our representatives advocating for our interests in the face of a bureaucratic administration that is, at best, unconcerned with its students’ lives. Instead, Senate often appears as a passive figurehead that holds meetings every once in a while. True enough, Senate has seemingly done nothing to respond to situations like the contentious departure of Gary Granger or the PCCC’s “graffiti ban” (to use the most common way to describe an admittedly more nuanced, if still deeply problematic policy), or at least nothing that has been widely evident to students. As the most consistent writer of Senate Beat this semester, I have respect for Senate and feel that they do important work. At the same time, I believe that Senate as a collective must reckon with the truth within the criticisms of their actions and establish themselves as a more active and confrontational institution to safeguard against the slow creep of administrative overreach. 

While I am glad there is competition in the numerous Quest candidates, I am still filled with trepidation about the future of this paper and other forms of independent student expression at Reed. In the brief two and a half years that I’ve been here, I’ve witnessed various avenues of student expression become increasingly closed-off due to administrative overreach. In the past year, traditions from Brawl Ball to bathroom graffiti to SB Info have come under restriction from the administration, with the latter only being able to persist due to continued efforts from Senate with the backing of general student support. These developments make me incredibly grateful that the Quest has been able to retain its traditional independence as an entirely student-operated newspaper. However, the Quest cannot be a static institution: it requires consistent and robust contributions from a wide swath of the student body. As the blank Quest from earlier this semester serves to show, these contributions have not been nearly as consistent as we would like in order to fulfill our role as a diverse representative body for student opinion. While this is a lack of quantity and not quality, and I speak for my colleagues in expressing my gratitude for our contributors (including all four Quest editor candidates), it reflects an unsustainable trend. 

Each semester’s board of Queditors should not be fully responsible for solving underlying problems of student engagement with the Quest and other community institutions at large. The Quest reported on the lack of engagement in March 2024 in an illuminating article available online and published a similar mostly-blank paper in 1988, which I can reference thanks to the messages of contributors in the Quest Discord (unfortunately more active at times than this paper). The Quest has withstood such crises in the past, and I hope that future editors will also prevail, but this can only happen with a broad base of support.

As it currently stands, the Quest is one of the last bastions of student autonomy at Reed that is being continuously circulated to the student body and widely received across campus. This is an incredibly potent medium for expressing important information and I am glad the Quest has platformed messages from Sunrise Reed and coverage of relevant news stories affecting Reed, in addition to our regularly scheduled programming and editor-created slop. All the same, we could be doing more. I welcome criticism of my shortcomings as an editor and personally wish I could have done so much more to expand the Quest’s influence, yet this burden cannot rest entirely on the editors’ shoulders, no matter how sweeping our campaign promises may be. The contributors and readers of this paper should have just as large a role in making their voices heard.

If Quediting has cemented any of my preconceived notions about the Reed student body, it is the truism that everyone’s a critic. I have received a good deal of fair and warranted criticism for my actions as an editor that I have tried to respond to as thoughtfully and authentically as possible. As someone tasked with representing the concerns of (a segment of) the student body, it is natural that one will also be tasked with responding to the grievances of that same student body. However, it is simply unreasonable to expect any individual Queditor to answer for all the past and present sins of not only the contributors to the paper, but the student body at large. Fair criticism is a vital part of keeping the Quest accountable to its readers and contributors, in addition to creating a dialogue within our community, yet bad-faith criticism of the Quest as an institution without engaging in any productive conversation or action over those concerns does nothing to resolve the underlying problems on this campus. If more people would write a letter to the editor or email the Quest about their concerns, it would go a long way toward both resolving the issues at hand and establishing this paper as a dynamic institution that responds to the student body to which it delivers information. 

A lot of people talk a lot of talk, but very few seem to do anything to address their problems. This attitude is everywhere, yet it seems, if not especially prevalent, then especially mind-boggling here at Reed where the college’s history has created so many places for students to exercise their autonomy to a degree unrivaled by many other institutions. We may not have sports, but Reedies can win any D1 Bitching and Moaning competition. If I have to cite any evidence to prove this thesis, read all the MCs of people complaining about others’ behavior in the library or conference without doing anything to resolve the situation in real life. 

I’m sure I’m not the only one to notice the community-wide sense of apathy behind the lack of student engagement. This is evident in the extensions of elections to reach quorum, the AppComm emails searching for applicants for positions, the low attendance of every ball I’ve been to, the comparative lack of student protests this year, and the drought of Quest contributions. While various other factors contribute to these developments, they all speak to a fundamental loss of faith in Reed and confidence in the ability to engage meaningfully in this community.

I know as well as anyone else that it is incredibly hard to be a Reed student. Even as I try to contribute as much as I can to my community here, it is logistically impossible to accomplish as much as I would like while staying sane. The fact that I can write this letter at all while balancing four classes with upcoming finals, four jobs, and my last week of Quediting shows how important it is for me to make my thoughts on these issues known. I don’t say that to brag: I am in the trenches and I don’t want anyone else to overextend themselves as much as I have in the past. Yet, it is important to understand the many ways in which one can still act. 

Looking beyond Reed, the American government inches closer to unabashed fascism every second and the state of the world at large looks no brighter. This is basic knowledge to anyone who doesn’t live under a rock, much less read a paper more reputable than the Quest. I repeat these given facts not to enable the existing state of defeatism, but to show the significance of the comparative freedom enjoyed by the average Reed College student in the grand scheme of things. Given this freedom, it is staggering how many people choose to nitpick and complain rather than contribute to making this campus a better place.

With this in mind, it is imperative that we act in the ways we can and struggle endlessly against the ways in which we are still restrained. I am a firm believer in the free will inherent within each individual, regardless of their external situation or whether they choose to exercise this will. Moreover, I don’t actually care about telling people what to do. You don’t have to write for the Quest. You don’t have to go to Senate Public. You don’t have to organize against the constant onslaught of evil imposed by our government. Even though it would be admirable to do one or all of these things, you don’t have to do any of them—what matters is that we have the willpower and the resources available to do them if we so choose. Under these circumstances, doing nothing is a choice that must be defended as fervently as any action. In a time when so little is open to us, why not take the openings we have?

Sincerely,

Vincent Tanforan

Soon-to-be-ex-Queditor