Looking North – Editor’s ramblings
By Tom Smeeth . . . In the Northwest parking lot that primarily serves the Instruction Building and Library, one can see where we’re heading as well as where we’ve been.
. Aside from the vistas, which have been dramatic and telling this season in particular, we see a functional school graced with a functional deployment of infrastructure from the 1970s. The parking lot stands for cars alone where once the plan had called for a then state-of-the-art media center.
. The learning environment of colleges has always been one to capture the imagination and inspiration of what’s best across the ages. We as a species seem a grand and glorious experiment at times. And yes, at times, inglorious. But the physical plant of a school can play an important part in its imprint on the personality and character of the field of academia dreams at play therein.
. For my time here as a student, the jewels I’ve discovered came too late are what impress me most about North. Aside from the people – and we have decidedly good people here, I affirm, what I will miss is to explore those gems of which I am aware. There’s now not enough time to fully explore all that is offered. Here I’m speaking not only of the curriculum one finds in the college brochure, which itself stocks valuable information. It’s a great start. But I ask myself, how to help incoming initiates more quickly ramp up their awareness of what this experience can hold for them?
. There are many stories about North: Its inception. How it was built. How it evolved. What it has taken through the years to progress, navigating the ebb and flow cycles of economy, awareness.
Looking North from the central building along College Way, the Library, the parking lot was to have housed a media center that was not built because of one of the Boeing contractions that occurred in the early 1970s. That is one of the stories.
. How North exists as a community connected to its neighborhood community, interests me as well. How are we reaching out to make connections in our neighborhood? How is our neighborhood reaching into us?
. This issue The Polaris seeks to dig into the decisions being made to improve student life, in particular the Student Center. It reaches out into our neighborhood to give taste and touch to social options – restaurant and film reviews, that we hope prove helpful. It publishes a creative submission from one of our school’s ESL students who stepped bolding into the challenge. I hope to see more, and in the variety of languages spoken by its students. The Polaris creases into the online world with a first-step web log to offer timely stories to be told – we look to your interaction with it to enrich it as well.
. Looking North, a perspective that seeks to keep an open mind, understand and embrace a whole range of views that exist here in this campus environment between Licton Springs and Thornton Creek.
. Looking North is hopefully an alive column that takes in suggestions, submissions and other writing that will find its way into the pages of The Polaris. PolarisNOW.blogspot.com offers photos, colorful pictures as well as Black-and-White photos, videos and audio, timely stories and updates, creative ideas and compositions, as well as includes you into the conversation.
We welcome your civil contribution into The Polaris.
Letters to the editor at NowPolaris@gmail.com
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