Andover students have a lot of ideals. We call for freedom, liberty of thought and autonomy of action. But chief among those ideals must be the ideal of trust, without which all others falter. In a community, it takes a trusting relationship between those who may restrict liberties and those who demand them. At The Phillipian, we call for freedom of the press. But if you want the liberty to go uncensored, you must be trusted not to break the conditions of journalistic integrity. Therefore, the trustworthiness of the Phillipian is integral to publishing an uncensored, student-run newspaper. If you want the liberty to take a test unsupervised, you must be trusted not to cheat. If you want the liberty not to be breathalyzed, your word must be trustworthy. And if you want the liberty not to be monitored by house counselors throughout the night, a liberty we are all presently afforded, you must be trusted not to cruise. We recognize that some students may call for these liberties as a means for breaking the rules; but for the majority of us, liberty is worth upholding for the sake of the ideal it represents. This Saturday, a student made the choice that many others have made—the choice to cruise and abuse a liberty which trust has earned us. He is not alone in doing so; he is simply the one who got caught. But in all instances through which students decide that such pursuits are worth the risk, they are risking not only their safety but the trust on which an entire community has been built. Untrustworthy actions are answered with harsher, more invasive tools, like the breathalyzer policy, which must stand in the place of the trust which has been lost. We are by no means promoting the blind acceptance of rules. By no means should the relationship between administrators and students become static. There must be some discussion of the rules. Our community should constantly evaluate the standards we choose to live by. Conversations like those that took place last Friday amongst students, in the CAFÉ forum, exemplify the kind of thought that must be pursued. We stand by the principles of self-reliance that Chris Massie ’10 invokes in his Letter to the Editor. However, those principles cannot and will not be provided for without a history of credibility on the part of students. Our liberties rest upon trust. When individuals in our community choose to break that trust in the name of ideals, they forget the most critical ideal of all. We’ve said it before, and we’ll say it again: If you want liberty, you’ve got to earn it. This editorial represents the views of The Phillipian Editorial Board CXXXII.
