A Short Note Before I Promise To Go Away Forever

Emerson Rhodes ‘24

I spent most of my summer alone in California thinking about how I got there and how much I really regretted not learning how to drive. I spent the last week back in the city surrounded by an endless flurry of goodbyes, a week shortly followed by a seemingly endless amount of “Hello! What’s your name, hometown, and concentration?” Part of my pre-college California contemplation was about reinvention—what would I do differently in college than in high school, or rather, different than early college? 

One of the things I settled on before starting college was to not talk Bard, mostly because there wasn't a lot to talk about, but I also didn’t want to spend too much time harking on the past. Bard often felt like a very distinct part of my life; graduation, prom, and accompanying ceremonies attempt to surmise the Bard experience as a single, insular event—a fond one, admittedly—but insular nonetheless. This lasted for the three hours I was on campus alone until the 2 other Bard students I chose to attend college came onto the campus as well. The more cutting truth became that Bard was not insular because it was formative; and when something shapes you—especially by sheer force of will—it embeds itself in the way you talk, the way you see, the way you agree. 

Something that’s easy to forget is that Bard exists as a community. Despite the singular “Community Day” in which people split into workshops divided by friend groups, I think that Bard’s identity is its lack of a definite one. I was offered (mostly) freedom in terms of my coursework and access to my professors, things that current Bard students take for granted in high school and things that I will confirm not every high school in America does. But, in that freedom there is a lack of cohesion, how much I related to my friends in Special Relativity and Calc III was often tenuous, and, with the repetition of days, conversations started to thin out. 

A small antidote to this was the Bardvark. My best sales pitch for the Bardvark is one of commonality. After a month of solitude in the hills of Palos Verdes, reflection back, The Bardvark truly started to seem like a very public forum. Student journalism, as a whole, I might add, also exists as a genuine anomaly. It’s a staple of almost every high school and college, but not necessarily of the real world, where there are a vanishingly few number of newspapers, so the prospect of a (generally) free, (also generally) no-strings-attached funding of a newspaper is a wonderful outlet. I will admit that the Bardvark is imperfect, just as I would admit I was as editor-in-chief, but the word that I would like to present is earnest. I think there is value in being honest in effort. As a piece of advice to Y2s about going to college: orientation becomes so much better when you stop trying to pretend you’re too good for orientation. 

One of the omnipresent conversations I had during my senior year was about engaging younger classes in extracurriculars: how do we get freshmen to invest in the Bardvark without buying them food? I think that at my most cynical, I would just assume that the underclassmen don’t care, but, as perhaps a more self-indulgent idea, I didn’t want to believe that admission to this school had truly become so flimsy. Bard is a fundamentally tight-knit community, it offers a very specific educational experience, and one that I certainly benefited from. Last year was the first year the question of underclassman community engagement did not seem fruitless. The student engagement with their (at the time) current principal was something I watched with great admiration, and is something I hope lives on in spirit. At the same time, I would encourage, given the brief tenure of former Principal Chaterpaul, to build on what Bard is, rather than to just protect it. 

There is a looking up that happens all the time, some call it nostalgia, others will call it greener grass, but there is no going back to Bard “how it was,” pre-Chaterpaul, pre-COVID, when the rooms were still open, pre-that one senior you thought was cool, there is only the march forward. I don’t really have a definitive point here (not that anyone at Bard really cares) but I encourage all who read to join the Bardvark, even if that means attending just one meeting. I would also encourage thinking about what Bard could and should be, not for the sake of it going back, but for the sake of it going forward. 

Good luck.