A new standard
Drinking water like the rest of the world
April 7, 2007
Matthew Jenkins
After the Fraser Health Authority decided we had too much arsenic in our water, Trinity Western University was forced to give students as much clean, tasty water as they could handle. I moved off campus this year, so I was kind of miffed that I missed my chance to drink water at TWU that didn’t taste like goose poop.
A few weeks later, when I heard TWU was thinking about connecting to Langley’s water supply, my envy turned to anger: why did this have to happen this year? Mars’ Hill has talked about getting drinkable water. TWUSA has talked about getting better water and even formed a committee dedicated to the cause. But nothing happened – until now. TWU wasn’t willing to change until the standards did, at which point it turned out that we were three times above the legal limit.
After my anger was appeased by a long, refreshing drink from one of those reverse osmosis thingies, I began to ponder the situation. Why did TWU take so long to get the water problem fixed? Perhaps it just wasn’t a priority; a university on a tight budget must look after other things before it invests in fixing what many would consider a minor issue.
But that’s just the point - in the time I’ve been here, TWU’s tenacious grip on the status quo has resulted in comically incompetent behaviour rather than any sort of human rights violation. The deteriorating buildings and over-stretched maintenance staff are testament to that. The same goes for all of the building woes that we currently have: asbestos, chapel concerns, mismatched architecture.
The hodge-podge of buildings we have reflects the arbitrary application of the Responsibilities of Membership, a document that multiple Mars’ Hill surveys have shown is not being followed. Rather than address this problem, some members of administration have denied the validity of the surveys and have been reluctant to even allow dialogue about how the standards might be changed to reflect a changing student community.
This is where I think the disconnect for our university is. External forces, such as the Fraser Health Authority or the B.C. Human Rights Tribunal, have no trouble getting TWU’s attention. But when students voice their concerns about water, buildings or community standards, our voice often goes unheard. But students are an external force on this school. The dichotomy between internal and external doesn’t take into account the fact that we have all lived outside TWU at one point, and will go back to living beyond the bubble after just a few years.
Each of us, when we come here, bring our own understanding of the world with us. During our time here, our values and standards are discussed, challenged, reworked and reformed by the university experience. But we also push back, each time we ask a professor why something is the way it is, and whether it has to be that way. We push back by choosing to live out our own standards. In light of this mutual dialogue, rhetoric advocating uncritical acceptance of the community standards rings false. It is a privilege to belong to this community, but TWU is also privileged to have us as a part of it.
Whether it’s the water supply or community standards, TWU has always favoured the status quo, moving only when external standards have prompted change. As students of the 21st century, we are the new standard that TWU is slowly adapting to. My suggestion: let us tap into the world’s water supply before this well runs dry.
Now you go...
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