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Published September 16, 2011
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Editor's Note: Power From the People
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Last Friday marked the first of REPORTER’s weekly staff meetings for the year. As the office filled with new and familiar faces, the room, which sat empty all summer, began to wake from its hibernation. As the staff reconnected, reminisced and began to collaborate on our upcoming projects, an energy that had been missing all summer began to bring our glorified conference room back to life. As everyone else was scurrying around, getting newcomers situated or trying to finalize assignments for next weeks issue, I had the small luxury of stepping back and watching the magic happen. The energy we captured that day is not unique to this office; it can be found all over campus, and it, more than anything else, is the defining aspect of RIT.
At first glance our campus of brutalist brick isn’t much of a looker. Truth is, it continually finds itself on the Princeton Review’s list of the nation’s ugliest college campuses. But what such a cursory examination doesn’t take into consideration is that it’s RIT’s people that make it beautiful. Another small luxury I have is getting to see the academic side of campus at all the odd hours of day and night. While there’s definitely a pleasant quiescence here at three in the morning, there’s also certainly something uncomfortably absent: the energy of the student, faculty and staff that makes the everything tick.
It has become very popular to bash, both publicly and privately, some groups of the RIT community. While it’s undeniably true that some of those ridiculed do live up to some unfortunate stereotypes, it has been my experience that they contribute just as much, if not more, to the energy of RIT than those considered to be in the mainstream. Because for RIT to be the place it is, it needs its people, each and every one of them.
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