One of the more radical of our nation’s experimental post-secondary schools, Deep Springs College, encourages its student to learn Personal Responsibility and Self Governance. They do this by limiting administrative involvement in the College’s management; the student’s are as much (if not moreso) the movers and shakers of the school’s destiny. While it is most certainly necessary to have full-time administrative staff that can keep the big picture (more than 4 years) in mind, enabling students to run their own education, to an extent, is invaluable both for the students and the College.

Except in ultra-rare places like Deep Springs), a sense of personal responsibility, self-sufficiency, and governance is, it seems, far from the minds and structures of our nation’s undergraduate schools. Not only are these values not intentionally instilled in students, rather quite the opposite. The majority of students find most life responsibilities are taken off their shoulders during their college stay. The buildings and grounds are maintained for them, their food is cooked and served, dishes and tables washed. Some schools even go so far to have laundry and cleaning services for the student’s clothes and rooms. Furthermore, nearly all of the major (and minor) decisions are made without the input or the knowledge of the student body. Many of these decisions are things that directly effect the students and could be better chosen with their assistance: course offerings, student activities, resource improvements, faculty hiring, etc.

A College is an organization that is made up primarily and exists primarily for its student population. As such, that population should be integral in its management and operation. Students can and should be part of everything in the operation of the College Community, from cooking and cleaning to admitting next year’s freshman class. Certainly these extra responsibilities will take time and will detract (at least chronologically speaking) from their course-specific studies. The overall educative experience, however, will be significantly improved both due to the student’s improvement of their learning environment, but also through the valuable experience of having done so themselves; responsibility is education.

This focus on teaching responsibility, also has economic benefits for the organization. The more students take ownership over the community, the less the administrative staff must take care of it for them. Student involvement can reduce the need for paid staff, thus saving the student money while, simultaneously, letting them learn for themselves how to live responsibly. While students cannot be counted on to do all of the work for the school (though they almost are in the case of Deep Springs), they can take care of the majority of responsibilities in the departments of marketing, admissions, buildings & grounds, food service, etc.

Although, I understand that this sort of learning environment may not be as appealing to some students (“But I don’t know how to cook! I don’t want to make my own dinner…”)… it is most certainly what we all need in order to grow up, not only as highly intellectual, B.A.-toting career go-getters, but as citizens, homeowners and residents of our communities. Our knowledge of Nathaniel Hawthorne’s Utopian themes in The Blithedale Romance is utterly useless (and even vainly misdirected) if we have never tried to grow and cook our own food, repaired some plumbing, made decisions that affect others, and lived in a working community (both in the sense that it is functioning together, but also that it does indeed do work).

In my experience, my fellow students had little or no reason to care about their campus, their community, or their college because it was not up to them and it was not theirs. For the most part, I felt as though the only allegiance to our school as a community was a false one based on athletics, cultural norms, and brand association. If my College would not have given me a free alumni sweatshirt upon my departure I would not own a single piece of its labeled paraphernalia. Our College gave us very little to engage with, very little which we could own during our time there. As a result, students abused the lack of responsibility required of them. The campus was frequently littered in glass beer bottles (which they did not need to clean up); food was often wasted on cafeteria trays and food often unappreciated (because they did not have to prepare or pay for it); bad professors often remained for years without being removed from their posts (because students didn’t think it was their place to remove them and even enjoyed the poor (usually easier-graded) professor’s classes.

To summarize: giving students responsibility increases their care for the college, improves their educative experience (both personally and corporately) and reduces its overall cost.