I had to put the question to myself: in what ways does Dordt College form the desires of its students? Surprisingly (to me), the first thing that I thought of was my Resident Life training.

I’m a Resident Assistant this year in one of Dordt’s residence halls, and one of the interesting distinctions that are presented to Resident Assistants as part of their training are the three primary areas for RA activity: reporting violations of the code of conduct, forming relationships with residents, and planning/conducting wing/campus “programming.” The interesting portion of that trio, for my purposes, was “programming.” The ambiguities of the word itself point in the direction I want to go. Does programming have to do with planning and running programs for students to participate in—wing events, bible studies, all-campus activities—or with literally programming students such that they unconsciously behave in certain ways? Both, I think. The first kind of programming is intended to accomplish the second kind.

The most important element of Resident Life programming occurs during W(eek)O(f)W(elcome). At least three unconscious sets of habits are instilled by the activities that Freshmen are led through during WOW week. (1. They are presented with a dramatic presentation known as “The Show,” which essentially provides a rationale for following the Dordt code of conduct; (2. They are exposed to what are supposed to be models for relating to other students in the persons of their “WOW leaders” (a guy and girl chosen to lead each small “WOW group” of freshmen); (3. They are programmed to conduct their social lives, preferably, in certain public areas like the campus center, the recreation center, and the food commons.

As far as I can see, Resident Life Services in its comprehensive, detailed, and on-going attempts to program Dordt students has (if in other terms) best understood that education is formation above and beyond information. It is perhaps too bad that they are the only group consciously engaged in the formation of students’ desires (–Smith would argue that other sections of the college, such as classes, also engage in formation, but often unconsciously with deleterious effects because the telos embodied in these sections of the campus are quite possibly identical to those of un- or anti-Christian colleges), but that is another issue for another post.

The inevitable result of identifying Resident Life “programming” as a pedagogy of desire is that one has to put this question to it: what telos is embodied in the practices it seeks to establish among students?

Chiefly, the telos seems to be a vision of communal life in which the rules are obeyed because they are recognized to be in one’s best interests and in which highly visible inter-genderal socializing occurs regularly. Quite appropriately then, one of the buzzwords of Residence Life rhetoric is “community.” I recognize and admire the self-consciousness of their pedagogy of desire. It puts things in perspective and adds a new degree of coherence even to disagreements I have with their vision of community or the programming by which they preach to student hearts. On those disagreements more, perhaps, some other time. In the meantime: kudos to Res Life for understanding that students are desiring animals, and I hope that other sections of the college follow their example to become pedagogues of desire.