It is quite strange, being 24 days away from college graduation — honestly, I still know very little and have no specific set of job skills. This is totally not what I thought I would feel like at the end of college, and, though I am certainly ready to be away from academia for a spell, I would be lying if I did not admit I was at least a bit afraid.

My years at EMU, though, have been fantastic. I have learned an enormous amount, grown a lot, and had two fun and important years all around. I will treasure them for the rest of my life. They have been 24 great months.

For EMU, however, these have been two hard years. I arrived at EMU during the tail end of a huge scandal, a presidential transition, and rapidly dropping enrollment; and then, I was fully present for three rounds of budget cuts. Things are not stable on the administrative side.

But, as I look at EMU as a whole, budget cuts are not what really concern me the most. What concerns me is that I see very little direction or cohesion in terms of message for students. If you asked every administrator — let alone every student — what EMU’s goal in terms of education was, you would get a plethora of different answers.

It feels like we are on the brink of a new era — our ties to struggling Mennonite Church USA seem to be more and more cumbersome, our student body is changing dramatically, and budget issues won’t just go away.

The worst thing EMU can do is not set clear, realistic, and unique goals moving forward that address these changes and keep EMU unique and effective.

EMU needs to decide what it wants to be in the next 100 years. It seems, for church schools in 2018, there are the two main options: Do we forgo our distinctive religious principles and try to be merely a top-notch liberal arts college, like so many other church schools and become some sort of Bridgewater North? Or, do we steer into a mainstream Christian rhetoric and try and recruit students mostly because of our faith billing and become a kind of more liberal mini-Liberty?

I, though, would posit that there is a third way. We could lean into our distinctive faith tradition and combine it with our rigorous academics. Instead of mourning declining enrollment amongst Mennonite students, we should challenge our other-than-Mennonite students to come to understand and grapple with the concepts we as Anabaptists have been struggling with for centuries. Do we really believe that our distinctives of peacebuilding, community living, faith-based creation care, interfaith engagement, the priesthood of all believers, nonviolence, and a red-letter Christology no longer have anything to offer the world in 2018?

I need to acknowledge something: yes, I’m white. Yes, I grew up Mennonite — of course I’ll argue for making a Mennonite identity more central to our education.

But is our current system — where we don’t acknowledge the weight of white Mennonite identity on campus and its rules defacto while we yammer on about diversity but fail to live it — really a good system? Would it not be far more honest, far more true to our mission and the mission of college in general, to challenge and equip all our students to understand the values and challenges facing the world through an Anabaptist perspective?

I leave my time at EMU with more questions than answers. Personal change, institutional change, is frightening. But, sometimes, it is necessary, and is better than staying the same.