The students behind the ink

Trista Turley- Managing Editor
11/11/11

One of the first things students learn upon coming to William Jewell College is the campus vernacular.  Campus is the Hill.  Shumaker Hall is the Complex.  The parking lot behind Semple Hall is the Nile.  The parking lot behind Browning and Eaton Halls is the Sahara.

This vernacular is an integral part of life at William Jewell.  Its use often serves as subtle means of creating a community on campus.  However, there are two phrases that really need to go: the Jewell Bubble and Billy Jewell High.  While these are both nifty terms, they do not describe accurately the William Jewell campus and student body.  By using them, William Jewell students are selling themselves short.

The term Jewell Bubble is used to describe the alleged isolation of William Jewell students from the outside world.  It implies that William Jewell students live in a self-contained world up on the Hill, ignorant of and uninterested in the goings on outside the confines of campus.  When a student is unaware of a major national news story or a local event, this ignorance is attributed to the mythical bubble.

The existence of the Jewell Bubble is taken as axiomatic.  Hilltop Monitor staff members, including myself, refer to the Jewell Bubble in stories and columns as if the truth of this term is beyond question.  Yet I can think of countless examples of students extending themselves beyond the Hill.  Each semester several students study abroad in locations scattered throughout the world.  Other students engage in service-oriented outreach projects in locations ranging from Honduras to Joplin, Mo.  Additionally, a large number of William Jewell students are relatively well-informed about current events.  On any given day, I hear students in the cafeteria discussing the latest news from the New York Times or CNN.  This is hardly a sign of a completely self-contained, willfully ignorant campus.  Granted, not all students are up to date on their news at all times, but that is hardly a reason to categorize the entire student body as existing within a bubble.

Rather than blaming this mythical entity, students should take personal responsibility when it comes to being well-informed.  Furthermore, while the Jewell campus is physically isolated from the surrounding area, this is not a phenomenon particular to William Jewell.  Nearly every college campus I have visited, including large campuses such as Mizzou and Georgetown, are also isolated from the immediate surrounding area.  It is a fairly common feature of college campuses, not a mark against Jewell.

Although used less frequently than the Jewell Bubble, the term Billy Jewell High gets thrown around quite often on the Hill.  The term suggests that William Jewell students tend to act like kids in high school rather than young adults in college, insofar as we tend to be socially immature and cliquish.  Some of this is to be expected.  After all, first-years graduated from high school only months before coming to the Hill, and most seniors are only a few years removed from roaming locker-lined hallways.  It is unrealistic to expect high school social behaviors to magically evaporate in such a short amount of time.

That being said, unless my high school just happened to be particularly hellish (which I seriously doubt), the behavior of students on the Hill is, for the most part, significantly more mature than the behavior of high school students.  On any given day at my high school, students literally would travel in packs, running over each other on the way to class with a few curse words or homophobic remarks thrown in for good measure.  There is no question in my mind that the social environment at William Jewell is significantly better than the environment at Troy Buchanan High School or just about any other high school in this country.  

Sure, there are times when William Jewell students act immature and rude, but there are times when 40-year-olds do the same thing.  We are not perfect, but we deserve a little more credit than the term Billy Jewell High School implies.

It is high time William Jewell students cut ourselves a bit of a break.  Scrap the terms Jewell Bubble and Billy Jewell High.  We are far from perfect as a campus, as a student body and as individuals, but we are better than those terms indicate.