The Benefits of Letting Students Mess Up
To the Editor:
Re “Let Them Make Mistakes,” by Jim Reische, chief communications officer at Williams College (On Campus, Sunday Review, Dec. 10):
As a recent graduate of the University of Pennsylvania, I applaud Mr. Reische for highlighting the need for college students to be given the opportunity to make mistakes, develop and grow.
Having written my senior thesis on the college student mental health crisis and founded an organization dedicated to solving it, I have come to understand that college students are suffering deeply from an intense fear of being perceived as anything but “perfect.”
This fear is so pervasive that college students have developed school-specific names describing the pressure they feel to mask any perceived imperfection. At Columbia University, for example, this pressure to mask is called “Columbia Face.”
In looking to solve this mental health crisis, we must create an atmosphere that allows for these “learning spaces” Mr. Reische mentions. We must create spaces where students can admit to failure, communicate their buried feelings and as a result develop and grow.
JARED FENTON, PHILADELPHIA
The writer is the founder and president of The Reflect Organization.
To the Editor:
Since we just served as editor in chief and senior editors of The Williams Record, Williams College’s independent student newspaper, Jim Reische’s article struck a chord with us. His reference to “a campus newspaper editorial that grapples with balancing free speech and appropriate behavior” was likely informed by a controversial Record editorial published in October 2015. We were on the board that composed that editorial, which advocated limitations to hateful but legally protected speech at Williams. We were widely and justifiably criticized for it, including in national media.
That mistake transformed how we tackle polarizing issues. The following semester, we published an editorial criticizing Williams’s president, Adam Falk, for canceling a controversial student-invited speaker. We saw tangible improvements in the board’s navigation of those difficult conversations: We respectfully challenged our peers’ opinions; we critically considered our own. Our editorial decisions, as the paper’s leaders for 2017, were not governed by fear of criticism, but rather an appreciation of it.
What we learned stuck with us as editors, and as young adults. We echo Mr. Reische’s hope that other students have the same opportunity to make mistakes — and be better for it.
MARIT BJÖRNLUND
EMMY MALUF
FRANCESCA PARIS
WILLIAMSTOWN, MASS.
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