Keepers Of The Flame

My Leadership Week Experience

By: Clare Buchanan

(Note: This article was written in September of 2024, before Bitting Hall was changed to “1772 Hall.”)

A week before the majority of the student body filled the mismatched brick pathways of Salem College with exuberance and glee, a rag-tag crew of determined student leaders moved into their dorms in preparation for Leadership Week. Leadership Week happens every year and is a time for student leaders to come together and prepare for the first week of classes and the eventual homecoming of chaos. Student leaders range from members of the Student Government Association, CAB, Orientation Leaders, and Residential Assistants. As is natural at Salem College, many student leaders are part of more than just one group, so naturally, some students wore various hats throughout the week. I was there to be an Orientation Leader. 

Moving in as a sophomore was more anticlimactic than moving in as a first year. As I dragged my suitcases down the corridor of Bitting Hall, I could hear myself breathe. I could sense the old building shift with me as I moved, like watching a grandmother settle in her easy chair. Then everything was still.

I was not used to the stillness. For the past three months over the summer, I had lived on the opposite side of the country, in the dry basin of Los Angeles where tumbleweeds unironically get caught underneath semi trucks on the 5 and where insufferable, tiny robots on wheels deliver twenty dollar smoothies to struggling screenplay writers living in shoebox sized loft apartments on Melrose Avenue. 

As soon as I touched down on North Carolina soil, relief washed over me, baptizing me with hope and freedom- and humidity! Hallelujah! I was a modern day Nick Carraway, escaping the rat race of the West to find comfort in the antiquity of the East. I was consumed by the verdant lushness along the highway connecting Greensboro and Winston-Salem, and catapulted back into what I refer to as my “normal life”, my life here at Salem College. Before I knew it, my Appalachian quilt was once again folded on my dorm bed, my Carole King Tapestry vinyl had returned to its rightful spot at my windowsill, and the world seemed to situate itself back on its axis. I was moved in.

As were about twenty five other student leaders, scattered and hidden in nooks and crannies across campus like Sister Maus herself. The first few nights were deathly quiet in Bitting. Occasionally I’d hear some scurrying about, only to look out my window and find a curious scamper of squirrels peering at me from their burrows near Clewell Patio. I was yet to see a familiar face.

Once Leadership Week began officially, I found myself contemplating why I had decided to move in a week early. My nineteenth birthday was on the first day of leadership week and I had chosen to spend it at Salem. As I sat in the darkness of my dorm room, a flashlight in one hand, and a Joan Didion book of essays in the other, I watched the clock on my nightstand turn from 9:36 pm to 9:37 pm- and I felt the guilty weight of eighteen slip away from me. The question, “Why am I here?”, would pester me throughout the week. 

I have a tendency to be cynical, it is in my nature. In high school, I found school spirit to be mind-numbing, pointless, and near nauseating. I had no pride in where I attended high school and wondered how anyone could be proud of such an apathetic and debilitating environment. My four years there, I felt like a fly trapped in amber, just waiting to make my escape. The sun would rise at that wretched place, and beat mercilessly onto the valley and the chaparral, the smog rising like smoke and suffocating me. Belonging was a word that never graced the footsteps of that hollow place. Community was an idea unbeknownst to me. So I racked my brain, trying to understand where this version of myself I had discovered at Salem had come from. The version of myself that wears matching t-shirts with others on purpose, gets excited when I get to lead a group chant, and the version of myself that would gladly be caught engaging in school spirited activities. 

It was because I experienced a radical change in self and an understanding of the value of community when I arrived at Salem. 

I held onto this feeling the first few days of Leadership Week, centering on my adoration for Salem College as I pushed through necessary training and icebreakers. But it was challenging. The first few days were isolating. As is natural, Salem siblings tend to hold on closely to our formed cliques that feel comfortable and safe. I searched the room for commonality and found myself coming up short on reasons why my presence at leadership week was needed. 

Around the fourth or fifth day of Leadership Week, student leaders were told to begin packing for an overnight trip to a mystical place called Camp Caraway. Growing up, I never went to summer camp or engaged in any outdoor activity that didn’t involve sitting disillusioned on concrete stained with feral cat urine, so naturally, I was immediately intrigued by the idea. My first thought and only reference point for summer camp culture was from the classic 1998 Nancy Meyers film starring Lindsay Lohan, The Parent Trap. And that was enough for me.

Salem student leaders embarked on the journey to Camp Caraway in two buses, one labeled Salem College, the other amusingly labeled Salem Academy. Outside the window, I watched as we left the four-lane highway and came upon a two-laned road. Blurry cornfields, meadows with hay bales, and small farm houses dotted pastures as we ventured off into the countryside. The bus was buzzing with anticipation as early 2000s pop and hip-hop music rattled the worn in seats. In what felt like the opening scenes of an A24 indie horror film, the chatter began to dim as we entered the woods, shadows from pines casting bizarre caricatures on our faces. 

A giant, white cross greeted us as the buses rolled into the Camp Caraway parking lot. I exchanged knowing glances with my fellow student leaders as we chuckled quietly. I still wonder what it must have looked like, as this particular gaggle of student leaders exited the Salem College and Academy buses, taking in the lightly veiled Christian motifs scattered across the campus of Camp Caraway with apprehension. As we walked into the “lodge”, I looked over to a friend and asked her if she had read or seen The Miseducation of Cameron Post. She took in a sharp breath, nodded, and held back a smirk.

Luckily, despite the Billy Graham books that warned of the dangers of androgyny tucked away in the lobby, Camp Caraway was not a conversion therapy center- but instead a lovely space that allowed Salem student leaders to further our relational work and understanding of each other. 

Towards the end of our night there, after I had spent the afternoon patrolling the property to make sure everything was truly as it seemed, student leaders were called down to an outdoor patio for a campfire chat. We had been asked to bring a meaningful memento with us. Many leaders brought physical items that held some sort of meaning to them- others discussed things in their lives that mattered to them that they held in their hearts. An empathetic web began to form as we looked around at each other, no longer seeing two dimensional figures, but rather individual, complex identities we sought to value. There was a noticeable shift, and the energy and emotion around the campfire became palpable. 

A previously incongruous group of individuals who knew of each other but who didn’t know each other, Salem student leaders began to move away from cliques and towards something more miraculous- a siblinghood. Camp Caraway seemed to have an ethereal effect on the group- bringing everyone together in a beautiful kaleidoscope of past experiences, present fears, and future wonders for the betterment and success of the Salem community. Days prior, chainlinks of natural judgements and fears had created barriers between student leaders, whether they were aware of it or not. And then, almost instantaneously over a campfire in the middle of the Carolina woods, the walls began to drop as siblings grew closer in community with one another- united under a common purpose to chase belonging and commit themselves to it. 

A week later, OLs sat in Bryant Hall with recently moved in first year students, discussing the topic of belonging at a RISE leadership event. Belonging- what does it mean? How does it feel? I was unable to answer these questions until I arrived at Salem College. I was unaware of what true community looked like- what it could feel like, before I became a Salem sib.

In the weeks following Leadership Week, I found myself revisiting the uncertainty I felt during those first few days of my arrival on campus. Far from the feelings of insecurity and fears of misplacement that were invading my mind that first week, I could see clearer. I remembered why I came. I felt called to campus a week early because I believe in the generational power of the cycle of Salem siblinghood. Other student leaders had other callings that brought them there, but there was a throughline between us all- a love for this place that we call home. This is what creates siblinghood and this is what creates a sense of belonging.

Yet, our united love and adoration for Salem College has to go beyond the occasional acknowledgment of the uniqueness of this space. Belonging is not always created instantaneously. Our commitment to curating belonging at Salem College has to show up physically, in involvement, and in true collaboration with each other. I ask you, Salem community, can we come to terms with the fact that we, as a college, are rare? (Where else in the world can you be awoken in the morning by a Moravian brass band playing outside your window?) Can we come together and remember everything that Salem has survived over the past two hundred and fifty-two years? Can we form a mutual understanding that while we are here to earn our degrees, when we graduate, we leave to prepare a place for future siblings? Can we push the boundaries that bind us to our cliques and our steadfast beliefs about what the college experience should be for us, and instead think about how we can serve this community we call home?

I know we can make a commitment to instill belonging deep into the culture of this campus. Future generations will look back at all we’ve done, and they will be proud. We stand on the shoulders of those before us, the ones who protected the flame in lanterns as they strode with their heads held high from Single Sisters to May Dell. We stand on the precipice of something great- something larger than ourselves. We just have to reach out and take hold of that fire – because we too – are keepers of the flame.