By Abby Conley
Guest Contributor
March 31, 2006
As the anticipation grows for Wonderful Wednesday, I, like many of my fellow students, groan at the mere thought of such a farce. We grow weary with the thought of a day devoted solely to festivity rather than the rigors of academic work. Although the holiday has enjoyed more than 35 years of prosperity, it needs to take its place as something obsolete, along with the typewriters and record players of its era.
Wonderful Wednesday was instituted in 1969 by Milligan president Jess Johnson as a way to give students a much-needed break. Just the other day, I had the opportunity to meet with a woman employed by the college during the first-ever Wonderful Wednesday. She remembered with fondness the initial surprise of the students and the fun that was had by all.
However, when I reflect upon this era, I think many students will agree with me that we don’t want to emulate this time in history. Hippies were everywhere. Vietnam was at its peak. Minimum wage was $1.
This was the year of the Derry riots in Ireland, the end of “The Saturday Evening Post” and the last concert and album of the Beatles. The Woodstock Festival began, which became a shrine of every kind of debauchery imaginable. The Stonewall Riots in June began the gay rights movement. Nixon became president. Warren E. Burger became Chief Justice of the United States. Qaddafi visited Mecca. A man walked on the moon.
Why would we ever continue a practice from a time of such turmoil and evil?
Wonderful Wednesday also came about in an archaic time when spring break was a yet-unheard-of concept on Milligan’s campus. Now we have spring break and Easter break. There’s enough to interfere with our studies without the added annoyance of Wonderful Wednesday.
We should also consider the fact that we are mature college students, not mere adolescents like those generations before us obviously were. Themed parties! Really! Those are for elementary school children, not adults regularly engaging in the study of the Bible and humanities. The next thing you know we’ll be engaging in other ridiculous rituals that once existed, like tossing newly engaged couples into the creek.
Finally, I would like to address this horrid vacation as an affront to Milligan’s mission statement: “As a Christian liberal arts college, Milligan College seeks to honor God by educating men and women to be servant-leaders.” Wonderful Wednesday in no way fulfills this mission.
We are not educating anyone, as classes are dismissed. We are not honoring God. Judging by the way we celebrate on this day, one would think God intended for us to be happy and enjoy life.
That is surely not the call of Christians. And in this wild display, we serve only ourselves, in no way learning to be servant-leaders since we are neither leading nor serving.
Like those who instituted it, Wonderful Wednesday has become a celebration that is obsolete and out of touch with today’s students. On behalf of all my fellow students, I demand that we not be forced to tear ourselves from our books and our classrooms. Allow us to study freely, not to have to hide under a façade of false glee at throwing ourselves down a waterslide.
Give us our Chaucer, our Dante! Assign another paper so that we may know the joys of learning! Bring back the pursuit of study only in the original languages of the text! We beg you, the faculty, the administration! Please, no longer force us to participate in this woeful Wonderful Wednesday!
Happy April Fool’s Day.