Since the start of the 2024-25 school year, Miami University has succumbed to substantial, and often controversial, changes. Administration increased faculty workload, a new arena will dominate student gathering spaces and changes to higher education in Ohio will no doubt be felt from Columbus to Oxford.
Yet, someone passing through campus would have no clue of the physical and institutional changes that will soon descend upon Miami. As a graduating senior, none of these changes will impact my soon-to-end Miami experience. Logically, I shouldn't let all of this noise bother me. I should look forward to grabbing my diploma in a month’s time and moving back home, oblivious to the chaos at an institution I will no longer attend.
But I am not oblivious. And despite the seemingly illogical nature of it, I care what Miami will look like when I’m gone. I care deeply.
I have not been quiet about this, either. I have reported how the new arena’s environmental impacts were not considered during approval and have penned staff editorials admonishing the administration over its mistreatment of faculty. I am deeply invested in the happenings at Miami because, despite leaving soon, I will always carry Miami with me.
It will always show up on my resume and my LinkedIn profile, I will discuss it in job interviews, the red “M” will remain on decorations and clothes I’ve collected and it will always define the past four years of my life. But, as universities love to promote, your time there will also define your future. I don’t want that future to be defined by the growing number of flaws creeping onto our beloved red-brick campus.
Perhaps it is selfish and an overreaction, but I don’t want someone to view my quality of education as diminished because I went to Miami; because I went to a school that submitted to the classroom censorship in Senate Bill 1 and preferred to overload STEM and business majors while stifling the humanities that make it a “liberal arts school.” I don’t want to be associated with an institution that is viewed by outsiders as hypocritical, going back on the very morals it promotes to new students.
Alongside my biology major, I will also be graduating with an environmental science co-major and journalism minor. Will a future employer question my knowledge about the scientific processes of climate change because it will soon be considered controversial in Ohio? Will my journalistic experience be overlooked because Miami is consolidating many of its writing majors, stuffing them all in one building and submitting itself to free speech restrictions?
When I decided to attend Miami, it was nationally respected, recognized for undergraduate teaching and research, known as a Public Ivy brand and promoted an emphasis on interdisciplinary study. I have seen much of that begin to fade. Will I regret “Miami University” showing up next to my degree?
Will the Miami I experienced disappear soon?
With everything in me, I hope not, because there is too much here that I still love. I love my tree-lined walks to class. I love that Oxford is all of the picturesque college town I expected it to be. I love that, while liberal arts were still valued, I could pursue both STEM and humanities studies. I love that most of the memories from this time of my life will be filled with joy.
I love the clubs I’ve joined and the people I’ve met. The Miami Student changed my life, and I am forever grateful this university brought me through the newsroom doors. I have made friends here and traveled the country with them, friends I know I will have for the rest of my life.
I have taken so many amazing classes, been taught and mentored by so many wonderful professors and have created bodies of work I am incredibly proud of. I am a better person because of my time at Miami, and I hope future students can say that as well. But I worry they won’t, and that terrifies me. Because what I found here is special, and there are people with no concept of Miami students’ experiences that are trying to take that away.
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This university doesn’t deserve that. The incredibly smart and talented people it attracts, students and professors alike, don’t deserve that. The rich history of our Oxford campus and the hundreds of thousands of alums don’t deserve that.
That is why I can’t give up on the place I’ve called home for the last four years. I can’t give up on a place I love so much.
First year or senior, alum or professor, we deserve better.
We don’t deserve the Miami that our administration is trying to create.
Sam Norton is the former opinion editor at The Miami Student, during which he won multiple state and regional awards for his opinion columns. He also edited the GreenHawks section and is currently a managing editor for The Miami Student Magazine. He will graduate in May.
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