It is lucidly clear that Fairfield University is more faux than the smiles you get walking by Facebook friends. However, what do you do when you are solely a product of this glamorized unreality? You realize the county you’re in.
Maybe that would explain the Connecticut Post’s tasteless, poorly written article from Feb. 24, “Animals upset Fairfield Beach neighbors.” The article and the title indirectly draw a comparison between untamed animals and the Fairfield students who have resided at the beach since the early ’60s.
The article’s second paragraph alludes to the rowdy Fairfield beach parties of the ’90s, before stating that the beach residents met to discuss the excrements of dogs and horses on the beach.
Everyone knows Fairfield County is about as interesting as FUSA programming, but I would hope the Post isn’t so desperate they have to turn a 100-word blurb into a 1,100-word feature on student beach residents.
As I looked into the mass of similar Fairfield faces and common high school cliques at the Point last Saturday, it was difficult not to return those Fairfield smiles with a genuine appreciation for the camaraderie of the students. It also made me realize just how out of touch this town’s money has made them, and how self-serving the bureaucracy of our University is.
Student Beach Resident Association President Erin Hickey ’08 saw the article and felt that it was petty; she instead chose to commend the seniors for their behavior this year.
“We have had a great year with fewer complaints, arrests and disruptions to the Fairfield community,” she said. “I would hope that, instead of trying to make it look like the students are responsible for the dogs and horses at the beach in order to have something to complain about, the residents of Fairfield would see the improvements that our class has made.”
Fellow beach resident Matthew Gudonis ’08 took particular insult to the biased tone of the article.
“These people act as if the University is somehow infringing upon the town, as if the students are some type of barbarian horde knocking on the gates of Rome,” he said. “On the contrary, the majority of these people moved into this community with the knowledge that it is home to a university, yet they are somehow baffled that students behave, well, like students.”
The students have to stick together because it’s too late to transfer. Enjoying cheap beer and plastic bottle cocktails on a shabby beach might not be a classroom lesson, but it offers some insight into a community more recognizable than any of which the University tries to portray on campus simply because it is real.
Meanwhile, Duane Melzer, coordinator for off-campus students, felt that the article was fair in presenting a then-and-now look at the beach area.
However, he did admit that the title had been changed from what he had originally seen.
“It’s unfortunate when one of the original titles had ‘animal’ in the name,” he said. “There will always be students at the beach, barring some donation of tens of millions of dollars and some land,” he said.
We have a University that only takes pride in its students when it is convenient to them, depending on who it is trying to sell the demerits of this institution. The students are the only ones who can understand this because they are living and interacting at a school that is just as quick to disregard them as it is to accept credit for their personal achievements.
We all have goals beyond Fairfield, dreams that are our own and nobody else’s. And until Public Safety can take those away, don’t forget about them, even at Fairfield.
Leave a Reply