Everything changes eventually. It’s said all the time, believed almost as often and might even be a bit cliche. At some point in our collective lives, most people go ahead and accept change. Despite its omnipresent nature, few treat dramatic change with less than some form of jaded affront. We may know change, we might accept it, but we’ll always be uncomfortable.
This being said, people are not the only ones who change — institutions do as well. It may be accurate to claim that Vanderbilt has diverged from the original vision and over the past few decades has changed to the point that it is unrecognizable from the original. This isn’t a bad thing. The freshmen certainly seem to like The Commons and its quirks and few complain of improved academic standards. In the end, however, it isn’t Vanderbilt that has changed, but the students.
Sure the campus is more diverse, many organizations express sentiments that used to be nonexistent, but each individual student has changed in their own right. Take me for example; when I came on campus for the first time as a student, I was probably a pompous ass that needed to be taken down a notch. Thanks to southern hospitality and courtesy, I’m still pompous and will remain so for the foreseeable future.
While there might be no moral to my story, I did change in other ways. My tolerance for alcohol has increased, I rarely sleep anymore and I learned that it is possible to become a workaholic without actually intending to do any work. I no longer get lost in Nashville and I know a little bit about country music and college football. Some things are small, few are actually big, but they all constitute change.
When I go home, I rarely worry about the parking decks or if the new medical research labs will done by the end of the break. Admittedly, I don’t fret particularly often about the student body either, but they rank higher than the furniture in the Branscomb lobby. It’s the people, not the place. I don’t think you can talk about how Vanderbilt has changed without talking about how the student body has changed and those changes are merely resultant of thousands of minor shifts in the various individuals that make up this school.
I’m sure I’m not alone. It’s true that Vanderbilt has changed over the years. The school has made great strides in an unambiguously positive direction. The story of the school can be interesting to hear about, but all people like to hear their own story first. These stories are frequently left out or remain undocumented. However, as the years go by, these stories will be all that remain in the minds of far off alumni.
—Thomas Shattuck is a junior in the School of Engineering. He can be reached at thomas.w.shattuck@vanderbilt.edu.
