Ending my college education early was always the plan for me, but the things that I have been able to see, experience and examine about ACU’s community were not. I have found immense growth in ACU over the past three and a half years, but ACU still has a long road to climb if it wants to keep catering to students as the world changes around them.

The plan for my college career changed during my senior year of high school. Originally, I wanted to go to the University of Texas at Austin after repeatedly touring the campus and its journalism program. I was going to attend UT and graduate early with broadcast journalism under my belt and be the greatest journalist ever. 

However, I realized that, realistically, it wouldn’t work out, so I started to redirect my college applications to three colleges, Lubbock Christian University, West Texas A&M University and Abilene Christian University. 

 So, ACU became my glass slipper pretty quickly and a new home which I would soon find. I joined the Optimist, eventually joined the Women of GATA and became the president of a student organization. 

I entered the campus to the most loving community, despite it being 2020, and formed tight-knit connections despite the social distancing restrictions. It was a time of a lack of stress and love from campus. Getting on staff as a reporter first thing was a goal, and I achieved that. I soon used this platform to fall in love with where ACU was heading – a path filled with love and a goal to be better every year. Where did ACU’s plan change? 

After the pandemic ended, I entered my time as managing editor, and the campus entered a new time of trying to keep up with an unlocked campus and return to normal. Some of these changes happened instantly. Chapel was held in different locations, the announcement of construction on campus, freshmen could rush and join in their second semester and Sing Song returned to its original capacity with students who didn’t know what Sing Song was. 

2021 started a domino effect in what we know as the culture of ACU today. During this year after COVID-19, I realized, as a campus, we were trying to find a new identity and culture, so we took things we were involved in and decided that would be our main focus, which isn’t inherently a bad thing. However, it caused competition to be tough between sororities/fraternities and even regular student organizations on campus. This was shown heavily on and off campus. Looking back at my column about YikYak, I specifically claimed that it was creating a toxic environment for students to be able to hide behind anonymous claims and distasteful jokes causing certain groups to be harmed or put up against each other. The topic of my column bleeds over into this one and YikYak continues to create a wedge between groups on campus, despite my best efforts. 

So, how can we answer to this toxicity of campus, and how it continues to stray the ACU student body to a point of hate?

Well, Google says it’s stress or more likely we are showing signs of distress within ourselves thus creating competitions that is unnecessary but needed to help our mental health and make us feel better about the world we created. In true college student fashion, we are just stressed.

I don’t accept that answer, stress is only a simple slice of the pie. Down to the bone we have gotten to the point where we are afraid of unity. With the tension these past few weeks on the downfall from Holy Sexuality Week to just plain issues amongst student groups and events, we have to take a step back and solidify some sort of plan we can all agree on. However, we cannot just uproot certain groups of people because they are “wrong” or because they are living a life not up to different expectations or beliefs. Things like this take time and conversations between both sides about how we can support these groups in the future without discouraging students from being who they are.

So, my one wish for leaving this amazing campus is to fill it with love again. Drop the anonymous apps, the competitions and the lack of conversations and simply love one another just as this campus was created for and just how Jesus wanted us to. Accept different opinions and maybe even hear them out whether you agree with them or not because that is the point of academics. But mainly, keep loving one wildcat to the next.

Signing off,

Maci Weathers, senior journalism major from Amarillo and newsletter editor.