I live in Alexander Hall on the campus of Princeton Theological Seminary. It’s an old building – over 190 years old. A few weeks ago, they installed a new 660lb bronze bell (pictures here) that was cast in Italy. The old bell had a crack in it and couldn’t ring, so this new bell was installed just in time for our President’s Inauguration last weekend.
So, here is the deal with the bell. They like to ring it (click here to hear the bell’s ring). They ring it 10 minutes before every class, every day, and then when the class is beginning. So, they ring it a lot. Yesterday, the first day of classes with the bell, I realized, "Wow. This bell is going to ring a LOT. This sucks." My initial reaction was pretty negative, and some friends and I definitely bitched about it. Who wants to hear a bell that often, all day long?
Then I went to my spiritual direction group, and our spiritual director graduated from Princeton years ago. During our group, the bell rang, and it caused him to be immediately jolted back to his seminary years with the sound of the bell. A time warp of a sort. The theme in our group yesterday was "the journey" and talking about the spiritual power of the idea of pilgrimage, and it was as if he was immediately taken back, through time, to another season of his life. It was fun to watch that happen for him, and that is when I decided that I enjoyed the bell. In many ways, Princeton has maintained a sense of tradition throughout the years; some of the things we get irritated with and find just stupid (such as the school’s persistence and struggle to not give in to the computer-age and let us register or get our grades over the internet)…but these things give the school and all the classes that come through it a sense of unity, a sense of continuity. I can sit with a graduate who went to school here in the 20s and 30s and reminisce about the wonderful tolling of the bell (which is tolling right now, by the way).
This morning in Systematic, I was getting a bit antsy to get out of class, and then it happened. Our professor was still talking (he promised us the first day of classes that we would never go over, but he consistently does go over a few minutes), and then it happened: the bell rang. And then it dawned on me – the bell helps maintain a schedule, it makes the professors shut up. So, besides the tradition and sense of nostalgia, it also keeps the professors accountable to the time that classes are scheduled for.
So I’ve decided that I like the bell.
And then I saw this posted on our bathroom door this afternoon:
“Whereas the new bell both greatly disrupts comfortable living for those residents of Alexander Hall and rings at times that are especially undesirable (i.e. very early in the morning), the undersigned desire that the bell atop Alexander Hall be rung on a more reasonable schedule.
I’m not signing. I like the bell. I want the ringing to continue. But more than that. If this is all we have to complain about at, while being students at Princeton, I think we should probably just forget about it and be thankful. No offense to whoever put up the sign, but there are bigger things to be worrying about than this. I signed a petition a few weeks ago about our health insurance plans here at the seminary (which are HORRIBLE and make being married and having children incredibly expensive!) – but I can’t sign this petition. There are people dying, starving, being oppressed, crying, being killed, being discriminated against and not having their basic human rights……and I can’t sign a petition because I don’t like hearing a bell at 7.50am in the morning.