New W policy means more stress - Opinion
Our own scapular-wearing Emily Byers evaluated LSU's new W policy. The party celebrating her debut column will be tonight at 9 pm at Serrano's. Please come show your support.
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Very well written first column,I am terribly proud of you. I cannot begin to adequately express my excitement that your scapular shows up so well in the online edition of the Reveille. Way to press the Catholic identity. And best of all, you evaluated the issue critically without coming off whiny.
In reading your story, I am reminded of Russell Kirk's Politics of Prudence. Kirk, a Catholic convert who was the father of intellectual conservatism, laid down ten conservative principles. The fourth principle is that conservatives are guided by their politics of prudence.
Kirk writes, "Liberals and radicals, the conservative says, are imprudent: for they dash at their objectives without giving much heed to the risk of new abuses worse than the evils they hope to sweep away. As John Randolph of Roanoke put it, Providence moves slowly, but the devil always hurries. Human society being complex, remedies cannot be simple if they are to be efficacious. The conservative declares that he acts only after sufficient reflection, having weighed the consequences. Sudden and slashing reforms are as perilous as sudden and slashing surgery."
I am sure the policy makers thought long and hard about the new system, but the devil is almost always in the dangers you did not think to foresee. The students probably should have gotten more warning of the policy change.
Continuing with the analysis of the issue through the eyes of Kirk, I am also reminded of his tenth principle of conservatism, a principle I find reflective of a holistic Catholic view of the world. The tenth principle is the thinking conservative understands that permanence and change must be recognized and reconciled in a vigorous society.
Kirk writes, "The conservative is not opposed to social improvement, although he doubts whether there is any such force as a mystical Progress, with a Roman P, at work in the world. When a society is progressing in some respects, usually it is declining in other respects. The conservative knows that any healthy society is influenced by two forces, which Samuel Taylor Coleridge called its Permanence and its Progression. The Permanence of a society is formed by those enduring interests and convictions that gives us stability and continuity; without that Permanence, the fountains of the great deep are broken up, society slipping into anarchy. The Progression in a society is that spirit and that body of talents which urge us on to prudent reform and improvement; without that Progression, a people stagnate.
"Therefore the intelligent conservative endeavors to reconcile the claims of Permanence and the claims of Progression. He thinks that the liberal and the radical, blind to the just claims of Permanence, would endanger the heritage bequeathed to us, in an endeavor to hurry us into some dubious Terrestrial Paradise. The conservative, in short, favors reasoned and temperate progress; he is opposed to the cult of Progress, whose votaries believe that everything new necessarily is superior to everything old.
"Change is essential to the body social, the conservative reasons, just as it is essential to the human body. A body that has ceased to renew itself has begun to die. But if that body is to be vigorous, the change must occur in a regular manner, harmonizing with the form and nature of that body; otherwise change produces a monstrous growth, a cancer, which devours its host. The conservative takes care that nothing in a society should ever be wholly old, and that nothing should ever be wholly new. This is the means of the conservation of a nation, quite as it is the means of conservation of a living organism. Just how much change a society requires, and what sort of change, depend upon the circumstances of an age and a nation."
I believe Kirk would have approved of the change due to the circumstances of students abusing the previous W policy, but would have preferred some measure to lessen the shock to the habits of that living organism known as the LSU student body. Nothing too much, but Emily's thoughts in light of the continuing problems with scheduling would be more than appropriate.
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