By TYLER DALE
Opinions Editor
It’s Piedmont Pride week! That means it’s time for Piedmont students, faculty, and the community at large to celebrate everything that Piedmont does well. We have a stellar faculty. Our alumni are moving on to do amazing things. We’re nestled in one of the most peaceful, beautiful parts of America, and are surrounded by a generous community who is wholly supportive of the work we do here surrounds us. Not to mention our amazing new student center that is about to be built. But there is a negative side to being prideful as well. When pride crosses over into cockiness and contentment, it hinders progress. I believe pride, in its healthiest state, includes the acknowledgement that improvement is always possible as well as the desire to achieve said improvement. As the pages of this newspaper has often revealed, we have a lot of improving left to do.
Piedmont, in a lot of ways, is still stuck in the twentieth century. Our Wi-Fi, despite several upgrades, is still miles behind similar institutions in our area. Our registration is done on paper. Our visitation policy and alcohol policy emulate that of a Catholic girl’s school in the 1940’s. Moodle is… Well, Moodle is a mess. And neither our library nor our bookstore have recognized that ebook downloads are steadily replacing traditional paper books. Yes, we’re improving in a lot of ways, our newly-upgraded mass communications department for example, but there’s still room to grow, and we shouldn’t let too much pride cloud that realization.
Of course, it’s not just the institution and the administration that have potential to live up to. The student body has its own improvements to make. We’re all adults, and I know we can act like it. We had a rough start to the year, and now students are getting arrested for drinking again. If we continue to make this type of backward progression, what reason would our administrators have to fix the issues I mentioned earlier? Yes, some of our rules are archaic, but they’re what we’ve got. And if we learn to either follow them or stop being stupid enough to get caught breaking them, they will change. Progression requires effort from both sides, and if students don’t straighten up or learn to fake it, we’ll continue to be treated like Catholic schoolgirls.
So Piedmont, be proud. You’ve earned it. But remember that with pride comes a desire for improvement. If we’re not striving for more to be proud of, then I would argue that we have no pride to begin with.