jedimindtrick

Haha yeah...I definitely didn't harbor any unrealistic expectations when I came here, but I know what you mean. I pictured more or less the Bennington that I got. Bob makes me unbelievably uneasy. He is slowly but surely trying to infuse Bennington policy with restrictions based on his much more conservative views. He claims he accepted the job at Bennington because he "liked the student body, and wanted to get to know them," yet at every open meeting he has held, as well as personal meetings with me and others I've talked to, he exudes a subtle complete disdain for us. I wish you could meet him, something about the man is just utterly repulsive. His eyes glaze over when he talks to you. It's like he's come here, he knows how he wants things to be, and he's going about changing them as quickly as possible.

Also: he's already had paintings removed from the up-cafe because they were obscene. There was an outcry, and they were replaced, but it's that type of mentality that terrifies me. My biggest fear is that this "philosophy of life" will outline new definitions of what is considered obscene or graphic (since this issue came up with the ordered removal of the porn tree) and that these definitions will be extended to students' artwork. That would be the beginning of the end, in my mind. I hope that through all of this publicity, myself and the other students who are involved/being interviewed can try to make it clear that nudity is not the issue. I'm really irked at the press so far for focusing on that and nothing else. Myself and another student who wasn't even quoted in the Reuters article both spent over an hour being interviewed by this woman on the phone, but as you can see, she was painfully selective in her writing. Argh.