There Are No Children Here Anymore

[Editorial for the CTS Prophet, May 2, 2007]

There Are No Children Here Anymore

It struck me this past week, after SpringFest and Chris and Mariah’s wedding, two events at which we were treated to such a rare sight in our buildings:

Children.
Laughing,
playing,
eating,
running.

Talking in church.

Creating ‘blessed disruption.’

Such a rare sight in our buildings.
Such a rare sound.

There are no children here anymore.

Oh, occasionally, someone will bring a child to campus:

Perhaps daycare fell through.

Perhaps they’re on their way to other errands.

But if a child comes to visit us,

(since they are only visiting),

With whom shall they play?

After all, there are no children here anymore.

There are no families here anymore.

Oh, occasionally they come to visit:

Spouses drop in, partners join us for lunch.

But if a family comes to visit,

With whom shall they speak?

After all, we seminary types get boring all to ourselves,
Talking our seminary talk.

So they stay a few awkward moments

Out of place. For now.

No place for the mothers to gather

No place for families to find support

No place, really.

Call us a Seminary perhaps, but not a community:

There are no children here anymore.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

It has now been one year since that last remaining student housing at CTS was closed. This has had a tremendous, mostly negative impact on our community, which we don’t really take time to talk about. This next year, we will begin to understand what the absence of housing in an expensive urban neighborhood means for admissions and student accep-tance rates.

Seminary is a sacrifice of time and energy, particularly for students with families. This year, students have been torn even further between seminary life and family life. This is perhaps most true for our international students with families, particularly for families that don’t have readily available com-munities to join and help them to adjust to life in the U.S.

There are no stated plans to secure housing for students in the immediate future. What will this mean for us two years from now? Ten years from now?

Administration has started talking about using the 5th floor suite, a cluster of offices which was leased to the University until this year, as a ‘Student Services’ Suite. I hope that in this space, there will be a place for families and children to gather; perhaps a room set aside for an informal daycare collective such as happened at McGiffert and continues in other seminar-ies in our neighborhood. I also hope that there will be a place for commuter students to rest between classes, as well as to feel connected to the wider community. It would also be wonderful to give space there to the international students’ language program, to move them up to a place of honor on our campus, rather than the most inhospitable room in our building. This wouldn’t fix everything, but it would be a small step in the right direction.

Most of all, I want CTS to be a place where everyone can truly belong, a place everyone can call ‘home.’

Le Anne Clausen, Editor