“I’m sorry, the building is only open to trustees and VIPs right now.”

This was the response given as group after group of students attempted to get a look at the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center on Friday. While classes were canceled “to allow our students, faculty, and staff to participate in the grand opening events,” it soon became obvious that the students of RPI were not, in fact, to be allowed near the building. If anybody was curious about why so many students were uncomfortable or outright against this new feature on our campus, this scene was an explanation.

Until Friday, I was not one of the many that are against EMPAC. I naïvely believed that it might, in fact, become the “living room of the campus,” as President Shirley Ann Jackson put it. On Friday, I learned what appears to be the truth. Not only were our library and parking garage (where students have paid to park) closed, students were being turned away from the very thing we were supposed to be celebrating. Meanwhile, these guest VIPs were given unfettered access to our campus. As a bystander, there appeared to be no list of who could enter or who could not. It just seemed that anybody who walked up who looked like a student was told to leave, while anybody who walked up who did not look like a student was waved into the building. The students of RPI were relegated to second-class citizens on their own campus.

Of course, later in the evening, students were allowed to participate in the opening events as long as they were invited. So-called student leaders (and in the interest of full disclosure, I was included in this list, though I turned down my invitation) were given special invitations for the black-tie gala event. Why do I, as the president of two clubs on campus, have any greater right to be part of the opening than any other member of the campus community? Many of the students here at RPI do great things, and only a small portion of them do so within the student government and club system that would put them on the list of student leaders. If we truly are to be a campus community, we need to end the distinction between leaders and the masses. We need to be inclusive in our celebrations so that these can be celebrations of all it means to be Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and all members of our diverse group have an equal opportunity to participate.

If EMPAC is truly to be part of RPI, the way in which students were shunned on Friday must never be repeated. EMPAC has the ability to enrich the opportunities available to the students on this campus in ways unique to any American university. Those in charge of it can either choose to follow that path, or choose to keep it exclusive. It is time for EMPAC to decide whether it wants to be the Experimental Media and Performing Arts Center at RPI or to join the campus community and become of RPI.

Brian Donlan