Patronizing. Dismissive. Amused. These are attitudes that we generally take towards fringe commentators who spout nonsense and take untenable positions. Usually, we feel justified in judging them harshly. Yesterday, during a closed-door meeting in Parkhurst, the administration took this attitude towards students who met with its representatives to discuss staff layoffs. The administrators chuckled. I’m sure they felt they were justified too.

Let’s be clear. The efforts of the students and the local SEIU chapter, who collaborate in part but mostly plan their events independent of one another, have been disorganized, haphazard, and “unprofessional.” No one is going to praise their elegant prose, deft political maneuvers, or clever strategic planning. This process has been messy, slapped-together, and oftentimes impromptu—which is exactly what one would expect from a grassroots movement dealing with what is, to its members, an unfamiliar and novel problem. One can hardly fault it for not moving like a well-greased political machine. It isn’t one. The local union began this process scared and immediately dropped all of its cards on the table, including its willingness to absorb pay cuts in order to preserve jobs. Likewise, the student response has been organized largely through blitz, and lately run through a newly registered gmail account. One could hardly scream “novice” any louder.

This effort, so far, has consisted of concerned staff and students feeling their way through a difficult and frightening situation.

But what this movement lacks in sophistication, well-polished rhetoric, and on-message discipline it makes up for in earnest dedication and raw emotion. While national union organizers and speakers have appeared on campus every now and then to breathe fire and attempt to impose some sort of discipline on the chaos, they have ultimately been peripheral to the action. A majority of what you see happening on Dartmouth’s campus is a result of an outpouring of student and staff sentiment. It’s unscripted, disorganized, and chaotic. In other words, it’s real.

The administration’s shared amusement, eye-rolling, and patronizing dismissal of the students yesterday was understandable on a political and tactical level. The students, in their idealistic fervor, planned to storm the President’s Office and present a letter that highlighted their concern—but they told the administration about their plans and even sent the letter ahead of time. As a result, the administration instead invited twelve students to discuss the letter. The students accepted.

So, unprepared, idealistic, and having given up any semblance of an advantage they might have had, these students were confronted with President Kim and a phalanx of top administrators, each armed with prepared remarks and talking points. Faced with a group that included media savvy professionals and a President they all admired, the students present were barraged with legal technicalities and prepared rebuttals. Honest but unhedged words were savagely and efficiently ripped apart. President Kim demanded to know what this ragtag group was accusing him of. He freely interrupted and silenced students—and, understandably, the students were largely unwilling to “talk back” to a figure who had assumed the seemingly well-deserved status of campus idol. Kim’s team then briskly lectured the students on how “uninformed” they were of the situation’s technicalities.

Although the students did know the essentials of what was happening to staff and the questionable tactics being directed towards them (which, if not illegal, are at least unethical), students were contradicted and chided on their ignorance of specific detail. The students recognized their ignorance, of course. That ignorance was the product of the administration’s opacity in regards to budget cuts.

However, even outspoken Dartmouth students are reluctant to push back against top College officials. Thus, yesterday, four administrators, with decades of combined professional experience, effectively “schooled” twelve genuinely concerned undergraduates for an hour.

But to focus on the legal soundness of their remarks, or the effectiveness of their execution, or their rhetorical skill is to miss the point entirely. One would have hoped that the takeaway for these top College officials would not have been that their opponents are unseasoned politically, but instead that students have genuine concerns about the process—concerns serious enough to compel them to draft a letter, albeit an unprofessional one. Thursday’s meeting wasn’t supposed to be a brawl over public opinion or snappy technical points. Instead, it was supposed to be an airing of concerns, uncensored and utterly vulnerable. It wasn’t supposed to be a confrontation.

Did the administration think that the students it dealt with got their “talking points” from the union? Did they believe that they had been “subverted” and made into pawns? Anyone who has met Earl Sweet, the president of SEIU local, would know that he has all of the malice and scheming of a bowl of porridge. If any of the points students took from the staff were incorrect, that should be a sign to the administration that the College staff is irrationally scared or misinformed. It should have been an opportunity to open a campus dialogue that assuages fearful murmurings. It should not have been an opportunity to soundly thrash a group of concerned students—students looking out not for themselves but instead for Dartmouth’s employees.

Without a doubt, there are varying degrees of firmness in student opinion regarding potential layoffs. A few are staunchly against any layoffs. Some believe that layoffs should only be a last resort. Many more are in favor of a careful, open, and considered approach to budget cuts and staff layoffs. However, general student sentiment seems to hold that the administration should talk openly with the staff. It’s a simple notion—but even now I can see the obvious administration counter. Legally, formal negotiations—at least for unionized workers—are more complicated than that. Of course it is. But that’s not the point. The point is that perhaps a letter from the union requesting more administrative transparency should not be answered by just a press statement about the administration’s refusal to talk to the union—published in the Valley News. Which is exactly what the administration did. Technical dismissal of student and staff concerns do nothing to address underlying community sentiment.

And that is ultimately what is at stake in this debate—community. Why is this process new to the union, and why is the union’s response so unpolished? It’s simple. It’s because it has never faced anything like this before. The context in which union negotiations had previously existed at Dartmouth was relaxed, casual, and—truth-be-told—most likely lax in the legal niceties. Negotiations never needed to be airtight or rigorously professional because they were a friendly exchange between partners.

Many parties are pointing fingers, and assigning blame for our predicament, to this or that. Maybe the College overexpanded in a time of plenty and made investments that, in hindsight, were poorly considered. All this would mean is that the College’s endowment staff and administrators made roughly the same mistakes that seem to befall most human decision-makers from time to time. On the other hand, maybe it is the case, as is suggested in some quarters, that the union is used to being given too much too easily, and that College staff is, overall, inefficiently allocated. Even if these claims are true, this doesn’t mean that the people themselves should be dealt with as an enemy—or that they should be treated as mere “assets” to be shed.

Students and staff don’t have the specifics about this budget process down pat. That’s not what they came here to learn, nor is it what they’re paid to do. But they don’t require this mastery of detail in order to have a sense of the process, and they deserve to have more openness than has been given so far. President Kim has declared that he wants to see Dartmouth students become leaders in various fields all over the world. That process begins with treating his student partners as parties worthy of respect and consideration. It also begins with not dismissing or cynically disregarding the idealism of those who are concerned. President Kim has also publicly declared that Dartmouth has a unique community that he wants, or wanted, to preserve. If that’s so, perhaps he should start doing a bit more to understand it better rather than simply declaring, in College-produced publications, that he “intuitively” understands it.

This isn’t a matter of policy, or action, or layoffs. In the end, it’s a matter of tone and discourse. Even if layoffs—even significant ones—come to pass, what ultimately matters here is the humaneness of the process. With real economic hardship hanging over its head, the staff deserves advance notice and a general sense of where the College’s budget discussion is headed. Maybe this would result in a more disorganized, slower process. It would probably make things messier.

But that’s necessary. There may be few things that are black and white, but it is unacceptable to treat layoffs as something that should be decided with a swift, sudden blow. This way of conducting business may make things faster and more efficient, but it also makes them colder, more mechanical, and more exclusive. The Dartmouth community appreciates the professional efficiency of this new administration. But efficiency should not be bought with community, community built up through hundreds of years and dozens of generations—of students and staff alike. Among all of Dartmouth’s most cherished traditions, this is the most fundamental, and the one we must not let fail. If it does, regardless of what synergies, efficiencies, and precision we gain in the end, we will still have lost the Dartmouth we love. This is what is at stake. Not just this or that program. Not just this or that class size. And not even just jobs. It is the soul of Dartmouth itself.