Speaking of Duke, here’s a quote from a recent New York Times article called “Rebels with a Cross”:
[Christian Smith, a University of North Carolina sociologist,] compared the romance of rebellion to the middle-class fascination with hip-hop culture. “Spoiled suburban white kids act like rappers, and there is a real connection to something, but really it’s not what their lives are fundamentally about,” he said. “Their lives are about wanting to go to Duke University.”
From “A Very Long Disengagement” by Mark Bauerlein, Chronicle of Higher Education (6 January 2006):
“Last spring Nielsen Media Research reported that the average college student watches 3 hours 41 minutes of television each day. . . . Last year the National Survey of Student Engagement found that 44 percent of first-year students never discuss ideas from their readings or classes with their professors outside of class. . . . The trends are not unrelated. The more young people gather to watch TV shows, transmit e-mail and text messages, and blog and chat and surf and download, the less they attend to their regular studies. . . .
To repeat, the more time young adults devote to activities like sending e-mail messages, the less time they devote to books, the arts, politics, and their studies. Time has proved the formula. In the 1990s the gurus and cheerleaders of technology promised that the horizon of users would expand to take in a global village, and that a digital era would herald a more active, engaged, and knowledgeable citizenry, with young adults leading the way. It hasn’t happened. Instead, youth discourse has intensified, its grip on adolescence becoming even tighter, and the walls between young adults and larger realities have grown higher and thicker.”
“Any questions?” asked Howard.
The answer to this never changed. Silence. But it was an interesting breed of silence particular to upscale liberal arts colleges. It was not silent because nobody had anything to say — quite the opposite. You could feel it, Howard could feel it, millions of things to say brewing in this room, so strong sometimes that they seemed to shoot from the students telepathically and bounce off the furniture. Kids looked down at the table top, out of the window, or at Howard with great longing; some of the weaker ones blushed and pretended to take notes. But not one of them would speak. They had an intense fear of their peers. And, more than that, of Howard imself.
–from Zadie Smith, On Beauty (2005)
Ridiculous title award: “[Name removed to protect the innocent] has been elected to serve for a year as the Seventh Prince of Asturias Chair at the BMW Center for German and European Studies at the Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University.”
I dislike the look of people who wear hats backwards (a.k.a., “hat boys”). Reading Patrick Allitt’s book, I’m the Teacher, You’re the Student, I realized why. Allitt, who teaches history at Emory, writes: “Then came the trend, starting around 1994, to wear the hats backward, with the bill sticking out behind and the adjustable plastic tab defining a semicircle of forehead. The reversed student hat makes a statement about its wearer, something like, ‘I am dull.'” That’s what I’m talking about!
One of the most consistent complaints I heard from undergraduates at Our Lady’s University concerned the poor gender relations on campus. Two major components were that men and women did not form real friendships often enough and dating did not take place between students. The two dominant ways men and women related to one another was (1) drunken hook-ups and (2) getting engaged to marry. Nothing in between.
Students often attributed this to OLU’s Catholic heritage, single-sex dorms, and policy of not allowing people in opposite sex dorms overnight (“parietals”). This led many of them to believe that if these pathologies were eliminated, gender relations would improve.
I always maintained that the state of gender relations was a generational issue, not attributable to the particular characteristics of OLU, So I defended single-sex dorms and (to a lesser extent) the parietal policy. Recently, one of my students here at Wake Forest offered some support for my position in an essay she wrote for class. The following is an excerpt:
An observation often made about seniors graduating from Wake Forest is that they are either engaged, almost engaged, or have never dated anyone in college. Why is this the pattern? Is it what students want? In the [campus newspaper] there was an article that expressed both a male and a female perspective on this issue. Both acknowledge that this was the common pattern at Wake Forest. As the girls put it, “people either don’t date at all, or are picking out rings.” . . . The other extreme found at Wake Forest is that people don’t date, but rather just hook-up on the weekends or after parties. The girl in the newspaper article asks, “Why is there pressure to randomly hook-up and not commit to one person?” This is definitely due partly to the pressure that is put on marriage. People don’t want to date someone if there is going to be a pressure for them to get married.
Wake Forest is not a Catholic university, it has co-ed dorms, and students are allowed in each others’ rooms overnight (provided that they are not actually sleeping — aside: this seems to be a self-defeating policy since I don’t think the kids are staying over to sleep). So, something more general is going on between men and women (or, perhaps more accurately, boys and girls) today. Even the commonalities in the language used on the different campuses — “ring by spring,” “hooking up,” “friend with benefits,” “walk of shame” — suggests that this is to some extent a generational issue.
But as I think about this further, I increasingly believe that saying it is a “generational issue” does not fully explain the situation. The student bodies at OLU and Wake Forest are very similar: predominantly white, upper-middle class, and suburban. So, social background may play a role. Also, both OLU and Wake Forest are largely residential campuses with no real “town-and-gown” relationship with the surrounding community and, hence, a limited social life for students. These characteristics — common to many private colleges/universities — may play a role. And the role of alcohol in the social lives of students surely has a profound effect on the way men and women relate to one another socially. I didn’t notice any major difference between the gender relations on-campus and those among students who lived off-campus; alcohol seemed to be a common denominator impeding improved relations.
One final observation, about OLU only since I don’t know what the case is at Wake Forest yet: as much as students complained about the poor gender relations on campus, no one seemed to do anything about it. I think it was easier for the students to point to the single-sex dorms and parietals than to change their behavior. Plus, if the milk is free, why buy the cow?
This weekend, I am going to a meeting at The Louisville Institute for the Study of American Religion to help choose recipients of a book-writing fellowship. The Louisville Institute has been very supportive of my work in the past, giving me both a dissertation fellowship and a large grant to conduct research on conversion. They are my friends. And they will want to know, as do so many people, “Why did you leave OLU?”
As I was reading the fellowship applications tonight, I was thinking about how I was going to respond to that question. For some reason, the answer came to me particularly clearly tonight. No fancy lingo, no dressed up and drawn out explanations.
Quite simply, I left Our Lady’s University because:
(1) I was not rewarded for my teaching and other involvement with undergraduates.
(2) The particular type of research and publication I was doing was not appreciated.
That’s it! Pretty straightforward — although no less upsetting — when I cut to the chase.
It is often said that nothing brings students to their knees in prayer like an exam does. Because of this, I am often asked who is the Patron Saint of Students. Until recently, my answer was the standard St. Benedict or St. Thomas Acquinas — with a slight preference for the former because his patronage also includes kidney disease and poison sufferers.
But in reading student papers from my “Religion and Society” class this week, I learned something new. The real Patron Saint of Students is (the heretofore unknown to me) ST. MATTRESS — the saint who receives the most attention from students, especially on the Sabbath.
Live and learn.
I’ve been thinking alot lately about the big differences between the students at “Our Lady’s University” and the students at Wake Forest University, as the similarities between them are so striking.
Just this week, for some reason, I noticed that Wake Forest students are much more likely to drive Audis than OLU students. The OLU students, it seems, favor luxury SUVs, like the Lexus or BMW, in addition to the ever popular Jeep Cherokee.
In retrospect, this makes perfect sense given the different regions from which the two universities draw students.
Bottom line: I would trade my car for a random draw from the student lot at either institution!
So, after my morning class in which people couldn’t bring themselves to speak, I went to my afternoon class during which we spent the whole hour discussing and debating a single question. One student would make a comment and another five students would raise their hands to weigh in.
Not only that, but the topic was the proper role of religion in public life — with specific reference to President Bush — and the students all handled the issue incredibly well. They expressed their opinions and listened to others’ opinions in a very respectful way. It was one of the best discussions I’ve ever had in class. Go figure!
Now, if only I could figure out the formula for that and bottle it.
