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This past July marked the fortieth anniversary of the moon landing. My Great-uncle Auggie didn’t lived to watch Armstrong and Aldrin make their famous moonwalk, but had he been with us, he would have been slow to comment. Auggie was a “wait and see” man. He was the sort who said, “Let’s wait and see if the horseless carriage amounts to anything.” When it did, Auggie bought his first automobile. More cars and trucks, too, followed with the decades, but my great-uncle never trusted his vehicles to run properly during Wisconsin winters. He kept the old sleigh ready and waiting in the stable. How magical was that sleigh in my childhood!

Every so often, I regret not having been able to tell Auggie about my first adventures in Japan, five years after the lunar landing. We never had a chance to speak about my homestay family. I never got to tell him about Megumi, my o-imoto-san (little sister), or about the cartoons that she and I watched before dinner on week nights.

Actually, Megumi and I didn’t watch cartoons as much as interact in response to them. We giggled nervously until Majingā Zetto finally triumphed over the forces of evil (for that episode). We cheered when Luna (no relation to Sailor Moon’s cat) helped Tetsuya repel the latest invading space monster. The marvels of Japanese animation became a vehicle for integrating into my host family, and into a strange society.

With her vast five-year old vocabulary, Megumi taught me many words and more than a bit about her culture. As it has been for subsequent generations of young Americans with a passion for Japan, the magic of anime was accessible to me when other avenues were closed. Great-uncle Auggie would have approved. A native speaker of German who taught school in English, he would have relished my learning a second language from mechas like Mazinger Z and cyborgs such as Casshan.

When I was struggling to memorize those barbarous katakana, I had no idea that anime were as new to my homestay sister as to me. Japanese popular culture of the 1970s was a wave that engulfed me. Struggling to swim rather than sink, I had neither the opportunity nor inclination to explore its history. Although I adored anime, I didn’t stop to ponder whether J-Pop would someday swell into a tsunami and inundate the US marketplace.

Like Auggie buying motor cars but keeping the trustworthy sleigh, I’ve adopted a pragmatic approach to the japanization of America. In the 1980s, I reluctantly abandoned the notion of conducting doctoral research on the social-psychological significance of Hello Kitty. In the 1990’s, I avoided saccharine Sailor Moon, despite the path-breaking yuri between Haruka and Michiru. In those years I preferred working out to videos of Zenki, possibly, the most undervalued anime of all time. Since the millennium, I’ve been loyally reading Nana, the best-selling shojo manga by Yazawa Ai. I’ve also been observing the attraction of J-Pop for the teen clients who come to Becker Academic for assistance with college selection.

CON AND CORP

On the Saturday in July before the 4-H fair, I took my interest in anime and manga to the next level. I convinced my husband, Kit, to accompany me downtown to the Convention Center for the fifteenth annual Otakon. The word Otakon is a clever contraction of the Japanese slang, otaku, an avid fan, and convention. Why Baltimore is home to America’s second largest gathering of East Asian pop culture fanatics is more a matter of happenstance than design.

However, the conference has become big business for the city. Last year, for example, 26,262 Otaku booked over 4,500 hotel rooms and contributed more than $27 million to the local economy. Attendance this summer exceeded last by 88 dues-paying members, so it’s safe to assume a continuing if flattening impact.

Otakon isn’t only an entertaining enterprise; it is also the annual meeting of Otakorp, Inc., a Pennsylvania-based non-profit organization. Unlike professional groups such as the Association of Asian Studies, which have non-member rates for annual meetings, it is necessary to join Otakorp in order to attend the conference. Kit and I joined at the door for an eye-popping $65.00 apiece, but better planners can save ten dollars by signing up early online.

The stated aim of Otakorp, Inc. is to use “Asian popular culture to increase understanding of Asian culture.” The synecdoche was probably lost on the average Otaku–the official member as distinct from the lower-case “otaku,” the fan who may or may not join up. From what I could glean, most youthful Otaku just wanted to attend a few workshops, watch anime, listen to the live music, take in the fan art and enjoy their cosplay (costumed role play).

Because we didn’t have three days to devote to Otakon and, frankly, because we are decades older than the target demographic, Kit and I only sampled the activities. We arrived after the Saturday morning game show, and we left before the evening masquerade. We didn’t dress in costume. (I considered going as Grandma Saki but knew that Kit would never agree to appear as Abbot Jukai.) By not booking a room at the adjoining Hilton, we missed the after-party scene. More geezer than geek, we opted out of the most festive of festivities. Our choices, no doubt, colored our impressions of the con.

We were left with panels, workshops, and anime screenings. Our other activities included standing in long lines for over-priced food, browsing the booths of artist/vendors and watching people wander the hallways, escalators and other public spaces. Keeping track of events was as easy as looking at the digital activities board. This was fortunate, because the font size of the pocket guide was indecipherable by middle-aged eyes.

PANELS GALORE

Later, when I could read the pocket guide, I was impressed. The number of panels was daunting–more than 150 from Friday morning until Sunday noon. Their variety was astonishing. To take examples with “anime” in the title, offerings ranged from the silly (“Anime’s Craziest Deaths”) to the serious (“Anime Lost in Translation”) and the outright studious (“Anime and Manga Studies”). There were panels to acculturate the neophyte (“Cover Your Bases” summarizing key anime) and to inspire the insolvent (“Cosplay Solutions for Any Budget”).

Aspiring artists could learn to create digital comics, make anime at home, build gundam models, compose manga or write fan fiction. Hard core otaku (lower case) could discuss their favorite series with others who shared their passion, be that for Evangelion, Negima or Full Metal Alchemist. (Alas, no Zenki.) For ordinary guys, there were panels on Japanese role play games (JRPG); for extraordinary girls, there were fashion tips on becoming American Lolitas.

The con organizers took seriously their mission to promote understanding of other aspects of Asian culture. A couple panels discussed Japanese music. (I hope they mentioned Sawada Kenji.) One panel covered the traditional board game, go. Another introduced the making of oishii (yummy) snacks.

In the realms of anime and manga fandom, facility in Japanese language seems to confer a singular cachet. The linguistic aspirant could choose between panels of the real (“Maryland Japanese and English Language Club”) and the virtual (“Intro to Learning Japanese for Otaku” emphasized online resources). Neither option conveyed the systematic drudgery that I escaped by watching cartoons with my homestay sister, but Otakon isn’t really about second language acquisition.

The prevailing dilettante cum ninja fantasy was nowhere more evident than in the sessions for surviving Tokyo. With titles like “Gaijin in Japan: A Real Taste of Tokyo,” “Budget Tokyo Travel,” and “Host Club Culture in Japan,” they approximated live-action Lonely Planet Guides geared to young, inexperienced students. Flying to Tokyo with little more preparation than an Otakon workshop would be as sensible as selling the family sleigh during a blizzard. However, Otakon isn’t really about intercultural communication.

Because I believed then that Otakon was about enjoying East Asian popular culture, I had one regret. I regretted not attending the panel, “How to Survive a Zombie Apocalypse.” I regretted missing the “history hilarity and essential survival tips.” Without attending, I won’t forget that knives don’t require reloading. All by itself, the print description in the pocket guide offered creepy, good fun (once I put on my reading glasses).

RANDOM SELECTIONS

We missed the zombie apocalypse, but we did manage the next best thing. We attended the panel on Nishizaki Yoshinobu. The “Nish,” as the three panelists called him, is the pervert who came to fame producing Space Battleship Yamato (1974) and stayed in the spotlight for sketchy, extra-textual reasons. He’s a genuine spooky character, and the panelists succeeded in conveying his genius and his weirdness.

Because the Nishizaki session was astute and entertaining, Kit and I decided to follow one panelist–whose name I have regrettably forgotten–to his next presentation. The man and his new set of co-presenters had agreed to explain how to “Review Anime the Right Way.” They didn’t explain reviewing, right or wrong. They talked about the tactics needed to get and keep their jobs as reviewers. (Having a job and doing it well are not the same.)

One caustic panelist launched a tirade on the stupidity of numerical rankings. He insisted that his reviews were worth reading in their entirety, and for this reason he refused to assign grades, stars, starships or other icons to anime under review. Whoever the man was, he certainly was not David Denby. The guy should have appreciated that his readership isn’t the demographic of The New Yorker.

During the Q&A, members of the audience asked heartfelt questions with a voracious intensity that surprised me. Expectation filled the room, as most of the fifty-odd people waited for the panelists to drop a hint, provide a clue, or offer up a talisman for opening the gates to the magical kingdom of profitable, freelance anime criticism. Unsurprising to us geezers, their hunger went unfed.

For the price of my membership dues, this panel was a bad buy. I’d rate it one star out of five. The panelists’ self-aggrandizing annoyed me. Their poor preparation annoyed me. The dumb configuration of the chairs annoyed me. The rude dude yelling in my ear instead of his cell phone annoyed me. The voracious audience filled me with pity, which, in turn, annoyed me. (Pity isn’t playful.)

That voracious hunger was palpable again in the fan art exhibit. For the uninformed, Wikipedia defines fan art (or fanart, no space) as being “based on a character, costume, item, or story that was created by someone other than the artist. The term…is usually used to refer to art derived from visual media such as comics, movies or video games.” The antecedent of fan art is the dojinshi of Japan, the wicked pop parodies by underground artists, some of which have acquired cult status and considerable monetary value.

In the fan art exhibit, you could forget budget cosplay. Expensively decked-out Otaku in their teens and early twenties circled tables laden with visual works. Most were reproductions of pricer, original fan art. Older, on average, by a decade, the fan artists sat serenely behind their wares, seldom speaking to the kids across the tables, to the kids staring hungrily into the charmed inner circle of J-pop fandom.

As a geezer, I’m more accustomed to crafts shows at the Maryland State Fairgrounds than to fan art on the con circuit. Over at the cow palace, folks meander up and down the aisles, peruse the wares, eat a greasy snack, and maybe buy a trinket for a favorite great-uncle. With settled lives and stable jobs, shoppers at craft fairs have no interest in becoming itinerant vendors of pottery or jewelry. In sharp contrast, many Otaku on the lower level of the convention center were impressed, if not awed by fan artists. More than one Otakorp member clearly aspired to the status of exhibitor. I heard a telling exchange between a bearded young man and a cat-eared young woman.

M: I hear (X) is making a living off his art.

W: He’s making money, but not enough to live on. His girlfriend’s paying the rent.

M: Yeah, okay, but can you imagine…getting here? [Gestures to the vendor in front of them.]

W: We’ll get here. We will. Just believe and keep working.

BEYOND THE CON

The beginnings of anime were modest. The meteoric rise of space operas like Mazinger Z and Space Battleship Yamato came after the fact of Armstrong and Aldrin walking on the moon. Anime took off about the time that my little homestay sister was teaching me useful words. For the last thirty-five years, I’ve been consuming J-pop stuff. I’ve never felt compelled to reach a conclusion about the enterprise as a whole, anymore than I’ve thought it necessary to make a pronouncement about American pop culture. This is my wait-and-see legacy from Great-uncle Auggie.

Like Auggie holding on to his sleigh, I appreciate the tried and true. I keep of copy of Royall Tyler’s translation of Tale of Genji (2001), Shikibu Murasaki’s eleventh century epic, on my nightstand. I’m confident about the quality of this rendering of a classic that has endured for a thousand years.

Again, like Auggie buying new cars and trucks, I function in the present. After Otakon, I purchased the seventeenth English volume of Nana, published by Shojo Beat. My Nanas are stacked neatly in numerical order, in a corner. Someday I may make a place for them on a bookcase. I’ll have to wait and see whether I truly treasure Yawaza’s opus or merely have a passing infatuation with her linework.

Without assessing the entirety of popular Japanese culture, I have reached a conclusion about Otakon. It is not positive. I regret this fact, because on the Saturday in July when I cajoled Kit into driving downtown, it hadn’t occurred to me that I would disapprove of anything as light-hearted as I imagined Otakon to be.

No doubt, thousands of cosplaying Otaku had fun frolicking at the masquerade. However, fun and frolic weren’t what I found. I found a disturbingly high level of need, of voraciousness. Far too many Otaku are spending thousands of hours and hundreds of dollars in their search for insider status, for subcultural identity, and for an income stream that is, for the vast majority, a mirage.

Otakon isn’t really about having a good time. The non-profit Otakorp, Inc. isn’t really about increasing understanding of Asian culture. Actually, the con and its parent corporation are a strategic global business appearing as entertaining, intercultural exchange. They sustain a select circle of American entrepreneurs, at the expense of “members” whom they only seem to amuse. In a semblance of fanspeak, Otakon/Otakorp, Inc. is a zombie apocalypse masquerading as a Halloween party for kids who’ve decided they’re too old to trick or treat.

Ironically, in the vast culturally imperialistic venture that is contemporary Japanese export production, the inner circle of Otakon/Otakorp, Inc., is positioned precariously at the margin. Baltimore may care if Otakon decides to move elsewhere. Tokyo wouldn’t blink if the corporation and its annual convention were vaporized tomorrow.

Skip the zombie apocalypse. Find another venue for exploring J-pop. For a genuine Japanese adventure, consider investing in a study abroad program. College students literally have dozens of opportunities to live and learn throughout East Asia, and several reputable companies run summer programs for teens. My favorite for secondary students is Experiment in International Living, the organization which pioneered the practice of homestays in 1932.

This past summer, as Otakon came and went from Baltimore, Experiment in International Living offered a four-week program on the northern Japanese island of Hokkadio. It was open to American secondary students, who had successfully completed one year of language training. The Hokkaido program combined homestays in Japanese families with classes at a local anime school. I can’t imagine a better immersion experience for the serious otaku.

cheering authenticity,
dkb

Children @ Play, Part I: Scarecrows, Imported & Homegrown

It’s that time of year again: the time when the Chinese scarecrows return to Cockeysville, and, perhaps, to suburban lawns across America. Maybe the culprit is climate change–of an unspecified meteorological or economic variety, but there is no doubt that the scarecrows arrive earlier each year. Time was when they came after the frightfully carved pumpkins and the tacky synthetic cobwebs. Now, they’re twirling on their bamboo stakes in the cold wind weeks before All Hallows Eve. They’ve been corralled into doing double duty as outdoor decorations for both super-sized celebrations to the harvest, to overindulgence and to high blood sugar.

Like my good neighbors, I, too, got hooked by their $4.95 sale price over at the JoAnn Fabrics in the plaza by the Corner Stable Restaurant. At that rate, I figured I could afford a pair. Besides, one four-foot tall, dressed-in-polyester, made-in-China scarecrow struck me as lonely, being so far from home and all. Yes, I bought a pair, but mine are holiday-specific. One is a grinning, green-faced witch; her mate, a matching Frankenstein. There will be no double duty for imported scarecrows in this front yard!

On Sunday afternoon, when I’m finished raking candy wrappers from the lawn, I’ll yank the bamboo poles of my green friends from the flower bed and stash them in the garage. There, they’ll jostle against other Halloween stuff: the broken pirates’ chest, the black wreathes and the plastic ghoul with the batteries that will once again probably have burned out before all of the excitement of compulsory candy collecting. Some Saturday before Chanukah my husband will decide Franky and his Green Lady are not worth saving. Off they’ll go to the landfill, where their styrofoam heads will outlast all of us. Next year, I’ll buy another pair of Chinese scarecrows and my little contribution to the US trade imbalance will keep on churning.

INDIGENOUS SCARECROWS

How much better it would have been for me to take a lesson from the winner of the scarecrow-making contest at the Baltimore County 4-H Fair last July! An obvious charmer with a mop of blond hair, the kid turned out to be more than the Scarecrow King. He totally dominated the challenges in the Clover Program for five to seven-year olds, taking home half a dozen blue ribbons. We didn’t see it, but I’m sure that boy’s scarecrow was the real McCoy, with straw limbs, worn overalls, maybe a red cotton bandana and nary a smidgeon of polystyrene.

None of the moms, dads and sibs sitting on metal folding chairs in the cow palace at the Maryland State Fairgrounds appeared to resent the Scarecrow King. But, to be honest, they had no reason for resentment. One of the great aspects of 4-H is the abundance of project categories. Any child from five to eighteen can garner a ribbon and the satisfaction of community recognition for an earnest undertaking. Granted, it may not be a first place ribbon, but a ribbon it will be, and if not this year, then certainly the next. A hearty populism thrives in the 4-H.

Most projects emphasize plant and environmental sciences, animal husbandry, personal health and development, or household consumerism. I don’t know where scarecrow-making falls, but I wouldn’t expect to find many Chinese Frankensteins sticking out of the shrubbery of 4-H homes. That 4-H populism fosters a Do-It-Yourself spirit.

FAMILY TIES

And, that spirit can be seen in all of the homegrown effort that goes into 4-H programming. Here in Baltimore County, 4-H is the youth education arm of the Maryland Cooperative Extension Service, and it is sponsored by the county government, the University of Maryland and the USDA. With respect to funding, my local 4-H differs little from chapters in other counties and states. All 4-H chapters function because many dedicated adult volunteers and a couple Extension staffers provide structure for the youth activities.

Across the nation, 4-H has a reputation as an intergenerational organization. Passing down the tradition of parent involvement was evident at the my local fair. When a healthy-looking guy of thirty-odd years finished announcing contest winners, he handed the mic to an older, equally healthy-looking man, whom he proudly introduced as his own father. Looking very much like my Great-uncle Auggie, the sixty-something farmer stepped up and called out the names of the next round of winning contestants. His grandson was among the ribbon-recipients happily high-fiving friends and family in the audience.

The 4-H families were as diverse as the rural residents of this county. There were plenty of fair-haired kids like the Scarecrow King, but there were also Hispanic and African-Americans families. Three boys, their father and grandfather all wore yarmulkes. I didn’t see girls or women in headscarves, but it wouldn’t have surprised me. Maybe they’ll be enjoying the fun when I go back next July.

The commonality that these folks share isn’t race or religion or political orientation. It’s a commitment to small-scale agricultural production, to healthy families, and, increasingly, to environmental sustainability. To the upscale urbanite, 4-H might appear as the quaint token of an earlier century. The four “H’s” do stand for old-time, time-tested values: Heads for thinking critically, Hands for serving others, Hearts filled with respect, and Health in the choices one makes in a changing world.

My Great-uncle Auggie was a wise and kind man. Were he living, he would have enjoyed the local 4-H summer fair as much as I did. I’m afraid those Chinese scarecrows in my front yard would be another matter.

Cheers to all for a safe Halloween,
dkb

Following Up on the Cost of Higher Education

“Support-Staff Jobs Double in 20 Years, Outpacing Enrollement,” The Chronicle of Higher Education

Last week, I wrote that an unacknowledged change in the mission of American colleges and universities has contributed to the skyrocketing cost of higher education. The Chronicle of Higher Education for April 24, 2009 addresses a related subject–the growth of the absolute and relative size of support staff at academic institutions over the last 20 years. Richard K. Vedder, the director of the Center for College Affordability and Productivity, notes that this “shift means that core academic operations, teaching, and research are now a smaller piece of the pie.” Vedder’s findings are consistent with my argument about the increasing numbers of resources allocated to student surveillance on campuses across this country.

The Cost of American Higher Education, Part III: The Price of Student Surveillance

the last in a three-part essay on the causes of escalating cost in American higher education

I’d like to start the third portion of this essay with another confession. I have a lifelong passion for math. I was that high school kid who did algebra problems for fun on Friday nights. For a long time, I believed that everything in the universe, including human frailties, could be translated into the elegant precision of mathematics. I’m a sadder but wiser woman these days.

As a corollary confession, I note that calculating the cost to American higher education for twenty-five years of commercial college rankings and the national 21 drinking age is an operational impossibility. The mathematical modeling tools exist, and I still play with them. It’s the data that’s the deal breaker: the data are insanely non-commensurate and inaccessibly proprietary.

So, be forewarned, if you’re expecting snazzy number crunching to support this argument, you won’t find it here, or anywhere with adequate reliability. This discussion is, perforce, anecdotal and speculative. On the plus side, recognizing my disapproval of the US News college ranking schemes and the National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984 (NMDAA) doesn’t require an algorithm.

A POPULATION EXPLOSION


The size of the average American waistline is not the only figure to have increased dramatically in the past two and one-half decades. Around the country, campus directories have also been getting fatter, and the biggest gain is not among the faculty. The ranks of administrators, particularly midlevel administrators, have expanded to the point that professional staff can approach or equal the number of academic appointments.

Some newer midlevel administrative jobs have nothing to do with jockeying for position in the rankings or keeping students sober. As examples, the e-mail administrators and the electronic-resources librarians are occupational adaptations to changing technologies. On the other hand, a plethora of new positions in admissions, student activities and residence life include responsibilities related to the rankings or the drinking age. Additionally, there are established midlevel jobs like the campus police, for addressing alcohol-related offenses. If we accept the claims of Amethyst Initiative and the self-reports of colleges and universities, the majority of these offenses are linked to NMDAA.

Midlevel administrative positions keyed to the rankings and the drinking age involve high levels of student contact. This particular kind of contact differs from the educating and mentoring done by faculty. The administrative positions are, at base, intended for student monitoring, or, if you will, student surveillance. I refer to them, collectively, as watcher work. (By this term, I mean a practice less benign than the ‘watchers’ of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer or The Highlander.)

(Before continuing, I want to emphasize the importance of distinguishing the occupants of watcher jobs, who are often genuinely kind and caring individuals, from the institutional structuring of student surveillance.)

Together, the various academic watchers cover the gamut of social interventions. Admissions counselors are primary interveners, protecting the campus from the entrance of unsavory elements. Residence life and student activities are secondary intervention positions, geared to maintaining prosocial behaviors among the student body. Finally, as tertiary interveners, campus police and security respond to antisocial infractions, most of which are by and against the undergraduate population.

Watcher work provides only a modest livelihood. The Chronicle of Higher Education recently reprinted the 2009 survey of median salaries compiled by the College and University Professional Association for Human Resources (CUPA-HR). At the low end of the spectrum were the primary interveners, the admission counselors making $34,000/year. The secondary interveners fare slightly better, with residence hall managers earning just under $30,000 plus room and board or $37,000 without room and board. Student activities officers also do better than the admissions counselors, with median incomes in the low forties. In the tertiary category, security guards make a mere $27,000, while campus police officers will earn an additional ten thousand dollars this year.

The new technology (techie) jobs pay considerably better. Programmers, systems engineers and database administrators all earn more than $50,000. Even the electronic-resources librarians make more than $50,000, while e-mail administrators are being paid $63,000. If measured by median salaries, watcher work is less valued than the techie jobs.

At first glance, it’s hard to accept that the cost of higher education has increased significantly from such meager outlays. However, there are many watchers for each techie–roughly five admissions counselors to one electronic-resources librarian. In the aggregate, the budget lines for surveillance salaries and benefits are correspondingly greater.

I don’t wish to give the impression that there are armies of watchers on every campus. But, if we look at the numbers employed in college admissions, student services and residence life, then the metaphor of a military division with ten thousand recruits is not hyperbole. In support, I’ll mention several professional organizations–watchers wishing to define their occupations as professions.

The omnibus watcher organization is the National Association of Student Personnel Administrators (NASPA): National Student Affairs Administrators in Higher Education. According to the website, NASPA serves, “the vice president and dean of student life, as well as professionals working within…residence life, student unions, student activities, counseling,…orientation, enrollment management,…retention and assessment.” It currently has more than 11,000 individual members along with 1,200 institutional members.

Another such group is the American College Personnel Association (ACPA). Like Avis in those old rental car commercials, ACPA–with 9,000 members in 1,500 institutions–is trying harder. It has launched an effort to network with other organizations. A president emeritus of ACPA will soon be the recipient of the award for Outstanding Contribution to Literature and/or Research by NASPA. Additionally, the current president of NASPA is a longstanding member of ACPA, and three ACPA former presidents gladly attended his NASPA inauguration.

The mission of a third watcher organization, the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers (AACRAO), is to provide professional development and to set voluntary standards of conduct in college admissions, student services and other midlevel administrative positions. AACRAO represents some 10,000 individuals from 2,500 colleges and universities in more than 30 countries. The percentage of AACRAO members abroad was not a number that I could find, although it would be interesting to consider.

Finally for this overview, there is The National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC), with 11,000 professionals “from around the world.” The organization includes secondary school guidance counselors and higher education admissions staff. NACAC aims to “advance the work of [admissions] counseling and enrollment professionals as they help all students realize their full educational potential, with particular emphasis on the transition to postsecondary education.” (I thought that helping students reach their educational potential was the domain of the faculty, but I must have been mistaken.)

As acculturated to American higher education as they have become, the tens of thousands of watchers–and their work of student surveillance–are cultural and historic anomalies. Canadian universities educate and socialize their undergraduates without all this bother and at a fraction of the cost. Much the same can be said for Europe.

However, Canadians aren’t especially concerned with college rankings, and they haven’t saddled themselves with a national 21 drinking age. The situation is more different and dynamic in Europe. For the past decade, the considerably smaller number of Continental university administrators have been implementing the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) of progressive, three-year baccalaureate degrees, rather than trying to lure high school valedictorians and curb underage drinking on campus.

A BUILDING BOOM

To my knowledge, no one has compiled figures for the recent spate of construction on the campuses of the 3,500-odd, four-year degree granting, American colleges and universities. Lacking statistical evidence, I’m going with my hunch that most recent construction falls into three categories: non-academic and prosocial spaces, secure housing (primarily for juniors and seniors otherwise inclined to move off campus) and–because teaching still has a place in higher education–science and engineering facilities. (I’m not tackling the last of the three in this essay.)

Occasionally, as at Pacific, construction for prosocial pursuits takes the general form of a campus center. More often, it is a field house or sports complex. Maybe I haven’t been paying attention, but I don’t hear the well-trained, backward-walking campus tour guides talk about what happened to the old dorms and gyms. I suspect that wrecking balls were involved.

Within the past two months, I did happen upon a couple exceptions to wasteful campus demolition. The first time was at Pomona College, one of the five Claremont Colleges (the 5C’s to insiders). The 5C’s are located an hour east of Pasadena, along the Foothill Freeway in Southern California. I visited in February, and the snow atop the towering San Gabriel Mountains kept distracting me from the practiced speech of our tour guide. (Yes, he walked backwards.) The young man was a senior, majoring (I believe) in politics. He talked and walked fast.

I drifted along behind the others, absorbing the vistas and the architecture. The college is an architectural gem, as are all the Claremonts. Suddenly, the guide’s speech drew me to the front of the little group. I listened intently as he explained that one residence hall and one other building are retrofitted each year at Pomona. That commitment impresses well beyond snow on the mountains.

The second exception was during the March open house weekend at Lebanon Valley College (LVC) in Annville, Pennsylvania. Annville lies ten miles east of Hershey and its pervasive chocolate smell. The weathered corn silos across the country road aren’t mountain peaks, but something of their pastoral charm has been reproduced in the contextual campus architecture. Mercifully, the LVC admissions staff tell the student guides not to memorize scripts and never to walk backwards.

My tour guide was a senior woman, an education major. When she took the group through the science building, she excitedly explained that it was the retro-fitted gymnasium of days gone by. The redesign was masterful, and I extend kudos of the non-Mertonian kind to LVC!

The student guides at Pomona and Lebanon Valley were proud of their respective communities for committing to sustainable building. They were blase about what Russell Kitchner, adopting a phrase from the auto industry, calls the “extra-cost options” on American campuses. Among the extra-cost options aggravating Kitchner are “residential suites, dining malls…and recreational facilities mirroring those of country clubs.” He has already concluded that the campus amenities building boom aligns poorly with the mission of higher education. At issue for Kitchner, and many critics, is the question of who pays for the amenities construction.

But readers beware: the bottom line in amenities construction is a snow-capped mountain seen from a campus quad: it is an alluring distraction. The fundamental issue in the college building spree is cause, not cost. The cause, I argue, is an unacknowledged but very real change in the mission of American higher education.

AN UNACKNOWLEDGED CONSEQUENCE

Not that long ago, the dual mission of American higher education was to prepare young women and men for the civic and service roles of adulthood and to provide them with the means for securing employment. Formal mission statements still pay homage to the virtue of anticipatory socialization. At Pomona College, for example, “the curriculum is designed to train the mind broadly and deeply.” Meanwhile, students at Lebanon Valley College are “building skills that will never go out of demand: the ability to think critically and creatively and the power to communicate clearly and persuasively.”

Beneath the rhetoric of broad, deep, clear and critical reasoning, the external pressures of the rankings and the national drinking age have been building for decades. Inexorably, the de facto mission of higher education has shifted, although few have taken note. The relentless watching and scripting of current conduct has overtaken the aim of anticipatory socialization for the responsibilities of maturity.

The new higher educational mission to monitor the present at the expense of preparing for the future takes forms beyond watcher work and appealing spaces of surveillance. American undergraduates now devote, on average, more hours each week to institutionally sanctioned (and uncritical) extracurricular activities than to their coursework. Moreover, the latest trend in undergraduate survey research is to measure present levels of student engagement with their institutions. (What happened to evaluating knowledge?)

Are there unintended consequences for reinforcing the late adolescent penchant for presentism? Do an abundance of extracurriculars and elevated amounts of engagement contribute to subsequent professional competence, satisfaction over the life course, or even a modest increase in the muchly lauded virtue of deep, clear, etc. reasoning? Does monitoring achieve these ends more expediently than old fashioned learning?

In this time of economic decline, there will be curbs on the construction of campus amenities, and there will be cutbacks in watcher work. However, the practice of student surveillance will persist in yet newer permutations. It will persist as long as higher education bows to the artificial manipulations of the market (the rankings) and to the legislated moralizing of special interests (the national 21 drinking age). It will persist as long as the mission of higher education remains highjacked by outside agents of unintended change. Although absent an algorithm, rest assured that all Americans will pay a price for the continuing surveillance of our college students.

another afternoon without cheers,
dkb

The Cost of American Higher Education, Part II: Unintended Consequences and Disinterestedness

the second in a three-part essay on the causes of escalating cost in American higher education

Not long ago, I received a group email from Margee Ensign, Dean of the School of International Studies (SIS) at the University of the Pacific. The opening line was an invitation to a summer reunion. Following her welcome were two sentences. “You will find so many changes at the university and in SIS.  Our new “green” student center is beautiful and functional, the new biology building means we are ensuring that students have the most up to date information in the fast changing field.” 

It struck me as wrong to be expected, willy-nilly, to applaud this construction. Did Pacific really need two new buildings? Couldn’t the old ones have been retro-fitted? After all, sustainability is as much about making do by modifying what we have as it is about tearing down and starting from the green drawing board–or CAD software.

Admittedly, mine is not the majority opinion. The majority view is generally a variant of “making do means you’re barely getting by.” Correction: it used to mean you were barely getting by, until six months ago. Public opinion on spending has been shifting now that 3.6 million Americans are out of work and all of us are drowning in debt, personal and national. In this scary new world, constructing a campus center does not confer automatic bragging rights.

How, then, are we to interpret the dean’s email? If we were to relapse into Seven Deadly Sins moralizing, we would argue that she is acting out an administrative propensity for greed. A secular, social version of this argument could reference the American addiction to conspicuous consumption, against which institutional economist Thorstein Veblen railed a hundred and ten years ago.

However, we have dispensed with moralizing, and conspicuous consumption is a description, not an explanation of why Pacific and other higher educational institutions are competing to put up the most conspicuous monuments to affluence. Still wondering about the new green student center, I decided to hunt for clues in the dean’s second sentence, “You will find so many changes at the university….”

Change is a familiar theme at SIS. After all, study abroad depends upon adapting to change, and SIS Professor Emeritus Bruce LaBrack has created a stunning (and free) online resource for cross-cultural adventuring. I clicked on his What’s Up with Culture, scrolled through half a dozen exercises and selected “Sources of US-American Culture.” There, I learned, not for the first time, that the quintessentially American virtue of The New is part our legacy as a nation of immigrants. And, US-Americans do, indeed, make a virtue of newness and change–at least until we reach middle age, when it all becomes too much bother.

We are less virtuous about admitting that change does not always work out as planned. The late sociologist Robert K. Merton (who, interestingly, changed his name from Meyer R. Schkolnick) referred to these frequently unplanned outcomes as “the unintended consequences of social action.” The start of the period, in which American higher education costs outpaced median US family income by a threefold percentage increase, witnessed two social changes. Both have resulted in unintended and deleterious consequences.

Certainly, no one anticipated that these changes would become driving forces in higher education costs. The first began as an annual feature in a weekly news magazine; the second resulted from the collective behavior of concerned citizens. In the past year, higher education administrators have spoken out against both developments. The American public has responded with dismissal or disapproval. What the message from higher education is and why it has failed to mobilize the public are crucial issues for grappling with the rising cost of higher education.

A WEIRD THING HAPPENED

For the fifty years from the presidency of “Give ‘Em Hell” Harry Truman until the election of “Change We Need” Barack Obama, Americans bought weekly issues of US News & World Report at corner news stands and in supermarkets. Sinking in the current economic downturn, the magazine recently changed to a monthly format. But, regardless of the frequency of publication, US News is probably most famous for its special edition, “America’s Best Colleges”, launched in 1983 and appearing annually since 1985. For the publishers, the special edition and its spin-off college guide are sure money-makers, with a built-in resistance to recession.

From the outset “the rankings” have rankled. Criticisms range from blanket opposition to debates over replicability of the research findings. In 1995, Reed College in Portland, Oregon, took the audacious step of declining to participate in the peer survey of institutional reputations, the most subjective portion of the US News rankings. (Because the objective measures can be derived from data supplied by The Department of Education, refusal to complete the peer survey stands as the definitive gesture of resistance to the rankings.)

Reed’s resistance was followed two years later by Alma College and Stanford University, but then the trend stalled and number of resisters stood at three schools for some time. However, since 2004, opposition to the rankings has snowballed into an avalanche of academic pushback. In that year, the presidents of fifteen liberal arts colleges–including tony Colgate and socially conscious Earlham–publicly voiced opposition to the rankings.

Last year witnessed another important development. The Annapolis Group, a confederation of presidents of liberal arts colleges, spent two days in closed session discussing the US News practice. Although The Group has not called for a rankings boycott, as of this writing, 61 college presidents have agreed not to complete the peer survey and not to refer to the magazine in their institutional publicity. They made this pledge by signing a document called The Presidents’ Letter.

The Presidents’ Letter is an odd document. Preceding the actual pledge, it lists six reasons to reject the US News rankings. The reasons follow one after another in a sentence of Proustian proportions. Embedded in fourth place is the discrete phrase, “…encourage wasteful spending and gamesmanship in institutions’ [sic] pursuing improved rankings….” There is no elaboration on the direct and indirect costs of college ranking to institutions of higher education.

The Presidents’ Letter was crafted by Lloyd Thacker, founder and executive director of The Education Conservancy, a non-profit organization, based, like Reed College, in Portland, Oregon. Since its 2004 inception, The Education Conservancy has sought to shut down commercial college rankings in general and the US News practice in particular. It operates with private donations and grants from prestigious sources like The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and The Christian A. Johnson Endeavor Foundation.

Thacker has never held a position as a college president or on a university faculty. Before founding The Education Conservancy, he spent close to three decades in college admissions and college counseling. His background may account for his recent popularity as a speaker on the circuit of The National Association for College Admission Counseling (NACAC). It does not explain how a man with this resume came to gain the attention, not to mention garner the support of sixty-odd college presidents in a campaign against one mass market periodical. In the world of senior administrators of higher education, this outcome is not just unexpected; it’s so rare as to be flat out weird.

THEN ANOTHER WEIRD THING HAPPENED

Not long after The Presidents’ Letter, another weird missive appeared. This one was called The Amethyst Initiative, and it, too, involved a group of college presidents, now joined by university presidents and chancellors, taking a public stand against a practice outside their narrow purview. Once again, The Annapolis Group spearheaded the assault.

A month after Thacker’s appearance, The Group invited John McCardell, President Emeritus of prestigious Middlebury College and the founder of Choose Responsibility, to speak at their June 2008 meeting. McCardell talked in advance with former colleagues. He delivered his message. Many Group members affirmed their concern for the unintended consequences of the 21 drinking age and set out to contact their peers at other institutions. From this beginning came The Amethyst Initiative, a project to “rethink the drinking age,” operating under McCardell’s non-profit, Choose Responsibility.

In the two years since its inception, Choose Responsibility has received major funding from the Robertson Foundation. Additional funds come from the Achelis Foundation, the Overbrook Foundation and private donations. Choose Responsibility accepts no money from the alcohol beverage industry or its affiliates.

The Amethyst Initiative calls upon the American public and our Congressional leaders to reopen the discussion on the national drinking age. It is deliberately not a policy recommendation, although signatories share the position that the status quo is a dangerous failure. They argue that it creates a hidden subculture of underage drinkers, promotes binge drinking and erodes respect for the law. Proponents of reevaluation also note that alcohol is a cofactor in most criminal offenses on American campuses.

The origin of this legal and public health crisis was, in sociologist Robert Merton’s terms, an unintended consequence. Specifically, it was the unintended consequence of a mother’s grief over the death of her teenage daughter, the victim of a drunken hit-and-run driver in suburban Sacramento County in 1980. The mother, Candace Lightner, turned her grief into prosocial action by founding Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD). Lightner worked tirelessly at grassroots organizing. She talked to anyone who would listen, from professional health organizations to national television audiences. She testified before Congress.

Lightner and the organization that she founded met with a modicum of success: Congress passed the National Minimum Drinking Age Act of 1984 (United States Code, Title 23, Section 158) (NMDAA). Under this amendment to the Federal-Aid Highway Act of 1956, all states became required to legislate and enforce the age of 21 for purchasing and possessing alcoholic beverages in public. The penalty for non-complying states was an annual ten percent decrease in their federal highway apportionments.

Like the US News rankings, NMDAA was not without its opponents, and in this case, the opposition included a Constitutional challenge. In a 1987 decision (South Dakota v. Dole, 483 US 203), the US Supreme Court ruled that under Article 1 and the Twenty-first Amendment, Congress has the authority to “encourage” states to comply with a 21 drinking age. For the next twenty years, there was no serious challenge to the national 21 drinking age.

Admittedly, the states have varied widely in interpreting and enforcing NMDAA. A few states outlaw all consumption for persons under 21, regardless of whether the venue is public or private. Many states have provisions allowing private consumption in the immediate presence of parents or spouses over the age of 21. Some exempt higher educational curricula that include tasting, but not drinking–which reminds this blogger of Cornell’s famous “wines” course. All fifty states make exceptions for religious rites, including the Christian Eucharist.

Enforcement, the second part of the NMDAA amendment to the Federal-Aid Highway Act, also varies by jurisdiction. For example, in 2004, the same year that the presidents of Colgate College, et al, declined to participate in the US News peer survey, a Washington, DC, court ruled that prosecutors cannot file criminal charges against persons accused of underage drinking. Police may issue civil citations, but these are, at best, only weak deterrents (think: parking ticket for open container). The consequences, unintended or otherwise, of refusing to enforce a federal statute include encouraging other scofflaw behaviors. This situation should concern more than a handful of highly placed academic administrators, but it doesn’t seem to be drawing much response from the public at large.

As of this writing, 134 presidents and chancellors of higher educational institutions have signed the Amethyst Initiative. A dozen signatories have published their reasons on the website. Typical of their concerns are the comments by Lawrence Schall, President of Oglethorpe University in Atlanta.

“I see the effects of [alcohol] abuse every day, in automobile accidents, in sexual behavior, in acts of vandalism and assault, in academic performance. I know I don’t have the answers, but I also know that the status quo has failed. I signed… not because I think there is an easy solution out there, but because we need to be talking about solutions.”

Holding the advanced degrees of juris doctor (JD) and doctor of higher education (EdD) from University of Pennsylvania, Schall is the kind of university president who chooses his words with care, even when his remarks appear unstudied. For interpreting the meaning of very deliberate writers, close reading is essential. And, upon close reading, Schall’s quote is most interesting for what it doesn’t say.

Absent from Schall’s endorsement, and from all but one website testimonial for the Amethyst Initiative, is any mention of the economic cost of the national drinking age to American institutions of higher education. As the sole exception, the statement by William Durden, president of Dickinson College, acknowledges the outlay for alcohol-related student services.

“…[the national drinking age is] an issue that truly maters [sic] for our society and that appears now to be compromising not only the health and welfare of many college-age students, but also, contributing to the ever increasing cost of an undergraduate degree through the student life, public safety and counseling resources that are applied to it without apparent success.” (italics mine)

For a college president, Durden has an uncommon biography. Before accepting the position at Dickinson ten years ago, he presided over a division of Sylvan Learning Systems, Inc., the for-profit tutoring company with a thousand franchises worldwide. He is a man with a solid track record in business. His experience in managing to the bottom line may explain Durden’s willingness to go on the record about some (not all) of the institutional costs of underage alcohol consumption.

HARDY, BUT HARDLY ODD, HABITS

Let us assume, until the last section of this essay, that both the college rankings and the national drinking age are costing higher education considerable sums of money. Let us also assume that these expenditures have increased over the past twenty years. If this is the case, then why is the ordinary citizen faced with the labor of digging through obscure documents like The Presidents’ Letter and The Amethyst Initiative to figure out what is going on? Why are academic leaders being coy about their financial predicament? Why aren’t they joining the high financiers and auto czars in a grab for federal funds? Surely, affordable higher education is no less vital to our long-term national interests than fuel efficient Fords and the umpteenth rescue of American International Group (AIG).

Now that bailouts have become the order of the day, it is difficult to understand why top administrators in higher education are reluctant to air their financial woes in public. But, it ought to be clear by now that they are, indeed, reluctant; and their reluctance is so pronounced and so uniform that it can only be an integral part of academic culture. To appreciate the way that academic culture underscores administrative stoicism, we can revisit the work of Robert K. Merton.

Merton’s pioneering sociological studies of science led him to conclude that natural scientists operate under a particular set of professional norms. He referred to these norms by the acronym of CUDOS, for communalism, universalism, disinterestedness, and organized skepticism (later, originality and skepticism). But, astronomers and physicists are not the only academicians to adopt Mertonian CUDOS. Humanities faculty and social scientists are no less acculturated to these norms.

The virtues of CUDOS permeate faculty life, from the teaching of freshman seminars to the debates about curricular revisions. Of the four (or five) Mertonian virtues, disinterestedness is most germane to our understanding of administrative stoicism in the economic downturn. By disinterestedness, Merton meant the outward appearance of acting in a selfless way. However, academic disinterestedness goes deeper than surface gloss. It shapes the conduct of inquiry and the pedagogy of the classroom. Unlike proprietary corporate research, academic inquiries may be replicated and their conclusions may be directly contested. In the classroom, good teaching takes into account the needs of different learners, but blatant favoritism is always out of bounds.

Higher education administrators function within this culture of CUDOS. They interact with college and university faculty members who enjoy a degree of self-governance unimaginable in business. Faculy serve on committees with top administrators. They view themselves as equal (or superior) to their deans and presidents. And, at many institutions of higher education, the deans and presidents teach a course or two each year. A bit of classroom contact keeps them connected to their communities and with the academic disciplines wherein they earned their own doctoral degrees. In this climate of studied disinterest, nothing is more foreign (and more unseemly) than the obvious self-interest of bemoaning financial woes.

Of course, there is a more skeptical interpretation of academic stoicism in the face of financial difficulties. In this interpretation, advertising a series of financial setbacks is bad for the business of appeasing trustees and building endowments. (After all, it is this intellectual labor rather than the teaching of an occasional course, which occupies most of a college president’s time.)

Whether one accepts the normative interpretation or the cynical view, the appearance of stoicism persists in the pronouncements of top administrators in higher education. Personally, I have seen this stoicism in recent correspondence from my undergraduate alma mater. About the time that Dean Ensign of SIS zapped off her email, I received a thoughtfully composed letter from Donald V. DeRosa, the out-going President of the University of the Pacific. He was writing to assure alumni that “…the University is well-positioned to weather this economic turbulence.” As I was meant to do, I took comfort in his words.

still not cheering,
dkb

The Cost of American Higher Education, Part I: Soaring Prices, Sinful Means

the first in a three-part essay on the causes of escalating cost in American higher education

Amid the holiday revelry at the end of last year, many of us avoided the bad news announced by The Center for Public Policy and Higher Education (CPPHE) on December 3, 2008. Faced this spring with the sobering reality of a continued economic downturn, avoidance is as welcome as stale fruitcake at a Seder dinner. Hence, once again, here are the CPPHE numbers for the twenty-five year period from 1982 to 2007:

Cost of US higher education: 439% Increase
Median US family income: 147% Increase

Why the percentage for the cost of a college education has increased three times more than for household income is a matter of structural alignment. But, grasping abstract social structures can be as hard as being the first to find the Afikomen. It is easier to point fingers of blame at recognizable social groups than to dig out the root conditions. Easiest of all is to wave a hand in the general direction of well known antisocial behaviors.

IMMORAL ACTS

For the last seven centuries–give or take a decade–The Seven Deadly Sins have ranked high on lists of antisocial behavior in the Western world. In the months since the CPPHE announcement, American pundits have orchestrated an outbreak of hand waving at three of the timeworn Seven. When the text is rising costs in higher education, the subtext is typically the cardinal sins of greed, sloth and lust.

In the moralistic view, the public is encouraged to look for rampant greed by administrators and sloth among faculties of indolent slackers. Lust, from the Latin luxuria, is the most common sin of American college students, who allegedly exhibit insatiable desires for garden apartments, housekeeping services and glitzy fitness centers. They also have a penchant–seldom reaching gluttony–for vegan, spa and fusion cuisine along with the ubiquitous pizza, barbeque and burgers.

The moralizing followed hard upon the heels of the CPPHE announcement. A December editorial in USA Today nicely described the moralists’ road to repentance for rising college costs.

Put aside for the moment the question of why [University of Washington President] Emmert makes more than twice as much as the president of the United States….Simple ways to rein in costs include requiring professors to boost teaching loads and retreating from the “amenities war,” in which colleges compete to build the fanciest athletic complexes (1 December 2008, pg: 11A).

In this editorial, rising college costs result from moral failures among the biggest institutional stakeholders. Because we no longer burn sinners at the stake, it follows that the solution for curbing costs is to control the behavior of these wayward individuals: the greedy managers, slothful educators and lusting students of higher education.

FANNING THE FLAMES

Finding fuel for the fires of the morality argument is no more difficult than scanning the front page of The Chronicle of Higher Education (6 February 2009). The banner headline by Robin Wilson reads, “Downturn Threatens the Faculty’s Role in Running Colleges.” It’s an expose of the tactics that avaricious administrators are using to wrest authority from the professoriate during the economic crisis.

Beneath this warning about the end of academic self-governance is another, penned by Jeffrey R. Young, “How Not to Lose Face on Facebook, for Professors.” This article recounts the saga of Dartmouth neophyte Reiko Ohnuma. Assistant Professor Ohnuma blundered when setting the security on her Facebook profile. She erred again by gossiping to her Facebook “friends” (and unwittingly to the entire Dartmouth community) about the value of Wikipedia for composing lectures in Buddhist studies.

Obviously, Ohnuma tripped a couple times on the step of Right Action, the fourth stage on the Buddhist eightfold path. I doubt, however, that she is guilty of sloth, as understood in the US-American context. A more plausible defense is the chronic exhaustion of the untenured.

Turning a few pages of this issue, I came upon a gem worthy of a Golden Fleece Award, if such were given to non-profit institutions. This is a rare instance when lust is not the student sin of choice. Faculty slacking, however, may have hit a new low in the account of four students of Robin Lee Mozer, English instructor at Birmingham-Southern College (page A6). The students devoted their January interim term to road tripping across five states on a quest for the South’s best barbeque–for college credit. It’s probably a good thing that Mozer, unlike Ohnuma, isn’t in a tenure track.

As amusing or depressing as they may be–reaction being in the mind of the reader–anecdotes of undergraduate antics should not be confused with hard data. There is no evidence that most US college students prioritize good barbeque, garden apartments or fitness centers. On the other hand, it is known that far too many are struggling to make tuition payments and feeling pressured into assuming unprecedented levels of undergraduate debt. To attribute the so-called amenities war to student-consumer demand is an unconscionable argument in victim blame.

Equally suspect is attributing the rising costs in higher education to antisocial behavior among university faculty and administrators. Although twice that of President Obama, the salary of University of Washington President Emmert falls significantly below the earnings (as salary, bonuses, stock options, benefits and sundry perks of the private jet variety) common among Fortune 500 CEO’s, not to mention movie stars, professional athletes, inside traders and the heads of international drug cartels. The notion of an aspiring millionaire pursuing a career in higher education administration would be as ludicrous as college credit for the South’s best barbeque, were it not being treated seriously in the press.

Similarly, faculty sloth is a fantasy of those who have neither earned doctoral degrees nor held positions in higher academe. A comprehensive study released this January by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) found that more than four out of five women and three out of four men currently in doctoral programs worry about the family friendliness of their career choices. Tenure track positions in research-intensive universities–the institutions granting doctoral degrees–have the worst reputation for balancing work and life. Slothful souls know not to apply at places like the hapless Ohmura’s Dartmouth College.

BEYOND THE MORALIZING

For those of us unconvinced by Seven Deadly Sins moralizing, it is time to address the root causes of the rising cost of American higher education. We need to look beyond the campus and its principal stakeholders, to the effects of two developments in the early 1980s. Preceded by a discussion of change in the US, these developments comprise the second part of this essay: “Unintended Consequences and Disinterestedness.”

not cheering just now,
dkb

What I Did for Winter Solstice: Helicon at Goucher

Helicon’s 23rd Annual Winter Solstice Reunion Concert

2:30 and 8:00 p.m., December 20, 2008  

Kraushaar Auditorium, 

Goucher College; Towson, Maryland

Price: $25.00/person with group discounts

Let’s start with a confession.  I’ve been avoiding bluegrass for a long time.  When I was living in gentle, gray-skied Ithaca, New York, it wasn’t always easy to do, but I managed.  I’ve done better in the intervening decades.  There was one lapse:  a Helicon performance several years ago when the guys were still doing their annual show at The Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall in Baltimore.  

This was before Ken Kolodner quit his day job in health research, when he and my husband, Kit, worked together.  Showing up for Kolodner’s gig with Helicon bandmates Chris Norman and Robin Bullock seemed the seasonal thing to do.  Their performance was good, probably great (I’m no judge of the genre), but I shivered constantly in the cavernous hall.  Afterwards, Kit and I waited for the Light Rail through the gloaming–nice old English word, that–and into the pitch black (think Vin Diesel).  It’s good that I, unlike Ken, never aspired to the hammered dulcimer, because my fingers had frostbite by the time I got home. 

Apart from a fit of masochism, I can’t fully explain what possessed me to convince Kit and a couple of our friends to attend the evening performance of Helicon’s winter solstice concert this year at Goucher College.  The change of venue may have had something to do with it.  As we pulled into the icy parking lot, I hoped that Kraushaar Auditorium in the Dorsey College Center would be an improvement over the Meyerhoff.  

I was not disappointed.  Dorsey is casual and inviting in the way that the hub of a fine liberal arts college should be.  Kit and I entered the building forty-five minutes before the show to find, much to our surprise, that a couple hundred people were lined up in the hall outside the auditorium.  Most of these folks had the look of ’60’s anti-war protesters, grown prosperous and mellow with the years, but still disinclined to convert to the overripe aesthetic of American Idol. 

I was glad to spot our friends standing second to last in the queue:  glad to see them and glad that they were near the end of the line.  (I detest dodging the dagger stares deservedly flung at line-cutters.)  The hallway was abuzz with happy chatter.  It was obvious that this audience has been turning out to see Helicon for years.  People talked of past performances and greeted friends with hippie hugs.  They milled about the display tables staffed by high schoolers selling c.d.’s, t-shirts, and posters of the bandmates in their individual and collective endeavors.  

Wearing a scarlet shirt and a pained expression, Kolodner darted down the hall, waving to a person here and shaking a hand there, as he hurried to perform some vital, last-minute task.  All the while, the line of concert-goers continued to grow.  It grew and grew until the hallway was filled.  More people kept coming through the doors of Dorsey.  

At a quarter to 8:00, volunteers opened the auditorium doors and began collecting tickets.  Talking and laughing, everyone filed into Kraushaar and sat at will in the continental pattern of seats around the stage.  Plunking our coats onto the empty chairs between our spouses, my woman friend and I headed to the bathroom.  But, would we be allowed back into the auditorium?  We had handed over our tickets, stubs and all, and we had no proof of having paid the modest price for admission.  We posed the re-admittance question to a volunteer at the door.    

“Don’t worry,” she said with a laugh, “I’ll remember you!”

Ten minutes and another hundred people later, she waved us back into Kraushaar, sans ticket stubs.  By now the auditorium was packed almost to its capacity of 995 people, and we were lucky to find our seats before the lights dimmed.  I leaned back in the comfortable chair and squeezed Kit’s hand.  Anticipation is its own kind of delight.

Helicon put on a good show.  The play list balanced lively Appalachian tunes and gentler Celtic melodies.  Added spice came from a sampling of other world musics–Scottish, Hebrew, Bolivian, Kenyan, and, new for this trio, Chinese.  There was hand-clapping and toe-tapping aplenty by the fans.  Most people forgot their inhibitions and joined Norman in singing the merry ole English tune, “The Malts Came Down,” and the French carol, “In Those Twelve Days”. 

This cornucopia of sound was possible because the Helicon performers have mastered multiple instruments.  Kolodner plays fiddle and hammered dulcimer.  He has recently taken to experimenting with a hybrid instrument called the hammered mbira.  It’s inspired by the African thumb piano and akin to a hammered dulcimer but with metal rods instead of strings.  Kolodner’s exposition of the history and development of his latest find was cut short by a quip from Norman.

Norman, himself, is probably best known for playing the wooden flute.  He also performs on the tin whistle, the piano (not at this show), and the Scottish smallpipes.  In addition to the piano, Bullock is a master of the guitar and several other string instruments including the cittern.  According to a source not Bullock, the Germans have a fondness for the cittern. They call it the Lutherzither, although the instrument is not the zither familiar to English speakers and the connection to fifteenth-century theologian Martin Luther is tenuous at best.  

The multi-instrumental virtuosity made for a first rate performance, even for listeners like this blogger, who are not major fans of bluegrass.  The format was the concert standard of two sets, with the de rigeur solos after intermission.  Two encore selections, “Round the Horn” and “Two White Nickles” wrapped up a delightful show.  As for technical aspects, the sound mixing by Doc and Jean Russell of Wire Knot Productions was nicely nuanced, and with this range of instruments, it must have been challenging as well.  There was only one song for which I would have liked to have heard more of Norman’s flute above the hammering by Kolodner.  

The performance becomes more remarkable with the knowledge that Helicon, like the winter solstice it celebrates, lasts but for a day and a night.  In the world of contemporary world musics, Helicon is an episodic entity.  Based in Baltimore, Ken Kolodner shoulders the responsibility of staging the annual engagement, relying on in-kind donations and volunteers like the high school kids at the display tables.  Robin Bullock flies across “the pond” from the French hamlet of Tripleval for the show.  Chris Norman comes from his home in Nova Scotia, or from Australia or Idaho or wherever he happens to be performing since he soared to superstardom on the soundtrack for Titanic (1997).  Nowadays, the winter solstice concert is the only time that the three men are certain to play together in a given year.  

Twenty years ago, Kolodner, Norman and Bullock may have started on the same musical journey, but their professional and personal paths have diverged.  Blond, boyish Norman went the way of the showman.  He’s a suave master of the quick repartee; a man who works the room with a flourish of his midnight blue velvet jacket.  Kolodner, intensely intelligent and a tad testy, took the on-ramp to conventional family life and–until five years ago–corporate employment, relegating his music to an avocation.  Towering over his comrades, his thick gray hair cascading in waves below his shoulders, Bullock chose to follow Polyhymnia, Greek muse of sacred song.  With his Buddhist salutations, his resolute calm and a French cat for a housemate, he is the image of the pure artist. 

These differences in personalities and life choices became as sharp and clear as stars on a cold winter’s night during the solo performances.  Norman gave the audience the choice of hearing him play the flute, the whistle or the smallpipes.  Despite my hoots and howls for the first option, the smallpipes won by a wave of applause.  I endured a few miserable minutes of bellows-blown bagpiping, wondering all the while if it would be rude to cover my ears.  Everyone around me loved it.  

When it came time for his solo, Kolodner reappeared with his teenage son, Bradley.  Before intermission, the young man had joined Helicon as they generously performed his eponymous “Bradley’s Tune.”  Proud father Ken noted that Brad’s been playing the banjo for a couple of years.  To my untutored ear, the lad isn’t half bad, but he’s nowhere near as adept as my nephew down in Austin, Texas.  

Bullock walked on stage without uttering a word, picked up his guitar, sat on a stool and played “Silent Night.”  No fanfare; no family schmaltz.  Simple, pure, beautiful sound, reminiscent of early John Fahey.  I was stunned.  I doubt that most of the audience shared my response.  

Along with a grounding in world musics, the contesting styles and interpersonal tensions are what make Helicon so fascinating, and so necessary as an antidote to the mainstream music industry.  These factors are also what make Helicon wrong for the Meyerhoff:  a space of perfected performance under the direction of one baton. Fortunately for a trio that delights in experiments–with quirky instruments, new cultural influences and at least one promising young musician–Goucher College is the right venue.  

Private, co-educational Goucher is a vital academic community, a place where debates and differences are aired in the surety of respect. Here, students can develop their aptitudes, explore their interests and arrive at a Heliconesque appreciation for the dynamics of change.  Also like the musicians whom I heard in Kraushaar Auditorium on the twentieth of December, Goucher has a strong international bent.  All undergraduates either study abroad or pursue a domestic internship.  

Regrettably but understandably, there were few undergraduates at the Helicon concert.  Goucher is a small community, which attracts three-quarters of its student body from out-of-state.  Classes were not in session, and most people at the residential college had gone home for the holidays.  

But, there will be other opportunities, if not next year on the longest night, then elsewhere at other times.  In their overseas travels, a Goucher student or two may catch up with Norman while he’s directing the Boxwood Festival in New Zealand or with Bullock when he’s ensconced in his French village.  In this hemisphere, they may be fortunate to meet Kolodner on one of his visits to Ithaca–a place where the hammered dulcimer, bluegrass and mindful living never go out of fashion.  

cheers,

dkb

 

 

  

Forgotten Treasures of University Museums, Part I: The Carroll Collection, Secret 59 and Other Cool Mysteries

The Johnson:  A Cool Reception

Truth be told, the Ivy League perpetuates a certain aloofness.  If such be needed, support for this claim came when husband Kit and I paid a summer visit to the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art on the campus of Cornell University.  Despite our status as Cornell alumni, I’ve never developed an emotional attachment to the Johnson.  I don’t hurry back there, as I do to the Heard Museum, The Frick Collection or Musee Rodin.  Those art spaces began as family homes, and they retain the scale of the human body.  Not so, the Johnson.

The Johnson opened thirty-five years ago, as a controversial addition to Old Stone Row.  The existing buildings on the row–three Second Empire beauties–were crafted from Cayuga bluestone, hewn from the very ridge where they stand.  Poured into place with yellowish concrete, the Johnson makes me think that a drunken giant tried to build a packing crate with really big Legos.  Actually, the museum is the brainchild of modernist architect I.M. Pei, and it extends a cool welcome at the best of times.  

I realized how chilly that welcome can be, when Kit and I passed through the towering glass doors one Saturday morning.  A lone woman sat at a circular desk on the far side of the entry hall.  We approached, smiled.  Her initial greeting was a demand that I surrender my purse.  Kit and I exchanged glances.  Why?  It was too big; it could damage the collection.  I had a flashback of holding the same bag in the West Gallery of The Frick–not an institution known for being cavalier about security. 

Like a tape recorder on continual replay, the demand was repeated.  More glances were exchanged.  Ill at ease but acquiescent, I tried to surrender my bag to the woman.  She recoiled and refused to touch it, gesturing behind her chair to a wooden box.  Presumably, I was to stuff the purse into an open cubby hole in the box, much like a kindergardener might stow a plush rabbit in a classroom toy bin.  This was Cornellian reserve (and disdain for personal security) taken to a new low.  

The Carroll Collection

Kit returned from locking my purse in the trunk of the car.  We made our way, without the assistance of the purse police, to a special exhibition in the lower gallery.  “A New World:  Pre-Columbian Art from the Carroll Collection” ran from March 29th through June 15th of this year. The complete collection contains four hundred pieces, roughly half of which were on display.  With nothing on our agenda until a family reunion in the afternoon, we passed the morning hours by moving from one pristine display case to the next.  

The Carroll impressed us more than expected.  The artifacts ranged from cylinder stamps to gold breast plates, but figurines and functional pottery made up the bulk of the collection.  Assistant curator Andrew Weislogel organized the exhibit by place, period and culture.  The periods span more than four millennia, from the Valdivian (circa 2700 BCE) to the Incan (circa 1500 CE).  South American cultures are most strongly represented, with the holdings growing thinner for Central America and Mexico.  Archeological sites stretch from Nayarit, northwest of Puerto Vallarta, Mexico, down the Pacific Coast to the geoglyphic Nazca lines in Peru.  

Sci-fi, lawn ornaments and psychedelics

Befitting a serious archeological exhibit, signage for the Nasca/Nazca artifacts made no mention of the lines.  If you’re unfamiliar with Nazca lines, ask a young person enamored by anime or video gaming.  You’ll discover that these patterns–geometric, zoomorphic, anthropomorphic, abstract–scratched and scored in the rusty gravel of a Peruvian plateau have been transported across a galaxy of youth-oriented products.  Or, for an introduction to Nazca iconography, see the summer blockbuster, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull (2008).  

Before their incorporation into international pop culture, Nazca lines were enlisted as pseudo-scientific “evidence” for prehistoric human contact with extraterrestrials.  They have an important place in the cult classic, Chariots of the Gods?  Unsolved Mysteries of the Past (1968), written by Swiss author, Erick von Daniken.  In turn, Daniken’s work is one source for the American film, Stargate (1994) and its two spinoff television series, along with another sci-fi series, Battlestar Galatica (BSG).  

I doubt that collectors Dr. Thomas Carroll and Charlotte Jones-Carroll pass the evenings at their charming suburban home in Chevy Chase, Maryland, in the exploration of pop culture.  For me, however, a working knowledge of these matters is a job requirements.  I made contemporary connections aplenty as I looked at one ceramic figurine after another.  

Most of my pop culture associations were amusing or at least benign. In the ceramic effigy of a Nazca cat/crop diety, I saw the world-weary features of BSG’s Admiral Bill Adama (played by Edward James Olmos).  Three hermaphroditic figurines from Manabi bespoke Spielbergian spacemen.  After several centuries, but still fifteen hundred-odd years ago, the folks in Manabi began using molds to make their clay figurines.  Their later version of the little guys/girls could have been pre-Columbian garden gnomes.  

Less amusing was my association with the slender funnel from Cara/Panzaleo.  The upper third of the funnel consists of three figures (Past, Present and Future?), joined at the shoulders like Siamese triplets.  An opening in the central figure’s head served as the mouth of the funnel.  The small faces have perfectly round, exaggerated occular cavities, as if someone repeatedly pressed the eraser end of a prehistoric pencil into wet clay.  The three pairs of hollow eyes called up images of the Gentlemen in “Hush,” an especially eerie episode of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer.  

Evidently, someone at the Johnson hoped to create a different viewer response to the Cara/Panzaleo funnel.  The caption reads, “This elongated conical vessel is crowned by a rather whimsical trio of human figures.”  I suppose one person’s warning can be another’s whimsy, but I doubt that the ancient artisan intended fun and games.  One possible function of the object was for injecting hallucinogenic enemas.  Even today, indigenous South American peoples use psychotropic agents only for serious and potentially dangerous shamanic practices.  As for enemas, well, most people just don’t see the humor. 

Polychrome pottery and poor advice

From the figurative works, Kit and I turned to polychrome pottery of the Piartal Period (600 – 1200 CE).  I was admiring a compote dish, when an involuntary memory carried me back to the early 1970s in Phoenix, Arizona.  In that time and place, I had an adolescent passion for Hohokam pottery.  In the memory I was making yet another visit to the Pueblo Grande Museum and Archeological Park.  I leaned low to study an intricate geometric design and my long hair brushed the protective glass of the display case.  

I came by my interest in anthropology honestly, living in a city where digging up backyard potsherds and spotting petroglyphs on desert mountains were the ordinary stuff of childhood.  “Everybody” in Phoenix knew that the canals bringing water from the Salt River to front lawns and cotton fields followed the network laid out by the Hohokam ancestors a thousand years earlier.  (This, of course, all happened in the years when water flowed in the Rio Salado and no one had yet conceived of inflatable rubber dams in the riverbed for a fake lake.) 

In the fall semester of my senior year of high school, I enrolled in an evening anthropology class at a local community college.  The unforgettable instructor was Donald H. Hiser, then the director of the Pueblo Grande Museum.  In taking the course, I was only following my aesthetic penchant and intellectual interest.  It was a simpler time.

In the contemporary feeding frenzy for admission to elite institutions of higher education, college courses for high school students have taken on new meaning.  In What High Schools Don’t Tell You:  300+ Secrets to Make Your Kid Irresistible to Colleges by Senior Year (2007), “educational strategist” Elizabeth Wissner-Gross lists the community college option as Secret 59.  It is, she claims without evidence, more prestigious than AP or IB courses.  

Wissner-Gross makes the ethically-challenged observation, “I’ve seen high school students who were struggling with AP Biology drop the high school course to ace community college Biology instead” (52).  On the off-chance that the college course proves too tough, the student, she argues, is under no obligation to report a poor college grade.  Her advice ignores the requirement that students attest to the full and complete truth of their statements on The Common Application for Undergraduate Admission. 

Stone clothespins with faces

It would appear that individuals donating collections to university museums are not bound by the requirements for full disclosure that are placed upon college aspirants.  Or, if they are, then the members of the public who view their munificence are not privy to the information.  The different requirements for disclosure struck me forcefully when I returned for the last time to the artifacts at the beginning of “A New World:  Pre-Columbian Art from the Carroll Collection.”  

Between pop culture associations for clay figurines and reveries over polychrome pottery, I had returned repeatedly to the first display.  I went back so often that Kit gave up accompanying me–which says volumes, if you happen to know my husband.  I simply couldn’t get enough of the Valdivian Venuses.  In an exhibit rich in beautiful, interesting artifacts, the Venuses were the most exquisite and intriguing of objects.  In a room filled with old stuff, they were ancient–almost five thousand years ancient.  

The Valdivian Venuses looked like old-fashioned wooden clothespins with etched features, but they were carved from stone.  In the pure lines of eyes and mouths, the simple curves of breasts and arms, each one of the half dozen artifacts bound an elemental power.  Fertility symbols, fetishes, totems, magick objects of purposes now unknown, the Venuses captured my imagination.  I had never seen anything like them, and I wanted one.  I didn’t want a reproduction.  I wanted a real one.  

My shameful, primal greed forced the realization about the disclosure of sources.  How could I get one?  How did Dr. Thomas Carroll, an economic specialist in South American regional development, and Charlotte Jones-Carroll, a social justice advocate with the Unitarian Universalist Service Committee, come by even one Valdivian Venus, let alone half a dozen?  Neither the exhibit notes nor the catalog held the answer.

A bit of web-browsing revealed connections to the world of international high finance.  Carroll had been a senior officer with the Inter-American Development Bank in Washington.  Jones-Carroll was a senior officer with the World Bank, and she worked for a decade with the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID).  But, by themselves, those facts don’t explain the Valdivian acquisitions.  Among my circle of friends and acquaintances are one former World Bank officer, a handful of USAID people, and many anthropologists and development economists.  None have amassed anything like the Carroll Collection.  

Let’s face it, the average person can’t wander into a bustling marketplace in Quito, Ecuador, and strike a bargain for authentic five thousand-year old religious objects. The typically curious kid can’t dig them up in the backyard, like Hohokam potsherds in old Phoenix.  So how did the Carrolls come by their collection?  As of this posting, I have no idea.  

However, as an alumna of the university, I hope that the Cornell trustees have a good, honest answer.  We are living in the new millennium of transparency in museum acquisitions and repatriation of stolen national treasures.  Scandal swirls around Marion True, former curator of the Getty, who has been accused of looting antiquities from Italy and Greece.  It’s not science fiction to think that in the not-too-distant future, someone more important than one lone blogger may begin asking prickly questions about the Carroll Collection.  When that day comes, the staff of the Johnson may need all of the Ivy League sang froid that they can muster.   

Meanwhile, if U C a cute Valdivian knock-off on e-Bay, text me.  I’m there.

Cheers,

d.k.b.

Amethyst Observations, Part Two: Dangerous Simplifications

Covering the launch of The Amethyst Initiative for The Baltimore Sun, Stephen Kiehl presents differing viewpoints on the advisability of lowering the American drinking age.  Caroline Cash, executive director of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) for Maryland and Delaware, opposes the initiative.  Ms. Cash observes, “It give me great pause to think of sending thousands of students onto a campus where the person who is most accountable [the president] doesn’t seem to be devoted to ensuring their health and safety” (August 19, 2008:  7A).  Her words give me pause simply to think.

Administrative Defenders

College and university presidents are fully capable of maintaining reputations–their own and those of their institutions.  Kiehl follows Cash’s quote with one by Baird Tipson, president of Washington College in Chesterston and a signatory of The Amethyst Initiative.  President Tipson argues that he and his counterparts at other US colleges and universities concern themselves greatly with student well-being.  Their concern is manifested, precisely, as the initiative which will open the underground college world of binge drinking to prosocial intervention.  

Improving undergraduate life has never struck me as a primary function of a university president.  Apparently, I have been naive in my belief that presidents spend most of their time garnering good will and increasing endowments.  I thought that student welfare officially fell under the purview of deans of student life, student affairs or residence life–the title seems subject to random variation.  

And, I deliberately insert that “officially.”  Administrators are not the only, or the predominant segment of an academic community to engage meaningfully with students.  Dedicated faculty across the nation still manage to see undergraduates as other than hindrances to tenure or blank slates for imprinting pet perspectives about some small aspect of the known universe.  

At the risk of further revealing my biases, I am intrigued that a behavioral health problem which has been spreading across American campuses for decades has suddenly become the cause celebre of top administrators who rarely, if ever, take a public stand on anything, big or small.  I cannot help but wonder how the unstated factor of institutional liability plays into this collective action.  

It is no secret that losing one or two wrongful death lawsuits can bankrupt a college.  Lowering the age of majority for alcohol sale and consumption knocks the last nails in the coffin of in loco parentis.  Whatever else it may do, an 18 drinking age reduces the risk of an exorbitant settlement, should a drunken student fall from a roof, drown in vomit or quietly die of alcohol poisoning on the sofa in a dorm lounge.  

Offending Opponents

I’m also pausing to think critically about “the thousands of students” being “sent” onto “a campus” by Ms. Cash.  Her words disturb for several reasons.  Social constructions of reality tend to correspond to legal codes. When a disconnect occurs, scofflaw behavior often follows. This erosion of respect for law is part of the problem of underage drinking on US college campuses today, but it may prove to be only a minor factor. 

Although not legally permitted to drink a bottle of beer on American soil, eighteen year old citizens of this nation have reached the legal age of majority for all other purposes, ranging from marriage to military service.  Corresponding to their legal majority, most matriculating college students perceive themselves as social actors, not as passive objects upon which others act.  Specifically, they do not think of themselves as being “sent” to college in the way that one sends a letter to a newspaper editor.  

The semantic divide between “sending” and “selecting” is vast.  Student clients of my firm, Becker Academic, LLC, actively participate in a process of mutual selection with colleges and universities.  Their selections often affirm family expectations, and I cannot recall one case where parental support for a final choice was lacking.  However, to speak of “sending students” to college is both inaccurate and demeaning to the emerging adults of our society.  

Also disturbing is Ms. Cash’s collapse of the diverse institutions of American higher education into one imaginary campus.  Campus cultures vary widely, and no two academic communities are alike.  The more time one spends at multiple schools, the more apparent these variations become. However, even for campus-avoiders, it ought to be evident that colleges differ in important ways.  One salient difference is the size of the student population, both undergraduate and total.  

As in-state examples of size variation, University of Maryland–College Park (UMCP) matriculated some 4200 undergraduates in 2007, while 450 first-year students arrived on the campus of Goucher College.  President C. D. “Dan” Mote, Jr., of UMCP and President Sanford J. Ungar of Goucher both endorsed The Amethyst Initiative. However, there really is no reason for anyone, including Ms. Cash, to believe that the conditions and frequency of binge drinking are the same for the two institutions.  

Concerned parties on both sides of The Amethyst Initiative need to rethink the idea of an omnibus answer to binge drinking.  Effective interventions–primary, secondary and tertiary–for this behavioral health pandemic will not be found in one-size-fits-all solutions.

not cheering today,

dkb

Amethyst Observations, Part One: Riesling, Writing and ‘Rithmatic

The presidents of more than one hundred American colleges and universities have joined together to call for a national discussion on the undergraduate use of alcohol. Their specific concern is the undesirable and unintended consequence of the 21 drinking age that has been in effect for more than two decades.  In all likelihood, discussion in the coming months will center on binge drinking, as distinct from responsible and moderate consumption.  

As a former faculty member and longtime anti-violence activist, I recognize the connections between alcohol abuse, academic failure and interpersonal crime.  It is not my intent to minimize a major social problem on contemporary American college campuses.  However, something of grace and civility has been lost to liberal education in the past twenty-odd years, and it is this loss of which I write.

Almost a Wake Up Call

People who work from home devise tactics to stay on track.  For me, that means limiting my morning interruptions.  As part of this self-imposed isolation, I make it a habit to avoid the latest news until midday.  I have found that the gloom of world events drains my concentration but rarely warrants a real work stoppage.  If a story of special relevance breaks, I’ll hear the news from Kit, my husband.  He goes into his office early to read online headlines and likes to come home for lunch.  Today, with our grilled cheese and tomato sandwiches we had a conversation worthy of cartoonist Bill Griffith.  

“What do you think of the Amethyst Initiative?” asked my hungry husband.

“Are we boycotting purple quartz now?  Like blood diamonds or tanzanite during Apartheid?”  My attention focused on the Foreman Grill.  “It was tanzanite in South Africa, wasn’t it?  Or, is tanzanite only in Tanzania?”

“You really don’t pay attention to the morning news, do you?  The Amethyst Initiative isn’t about jewelry.  It’s a bunch of college presidents who want to explore lowering the drinking age.”  

I had served our lunch.  Kit was munching his sandwich and, consequently, mumbling.    

“Did you really say college presidents want to lower the drinking age?  American college presidents?  Maybe somebody finally read Seaman…but what’s with the amethysts?”

Kit chewed; I ruminated. 

“Are academicians mixing their reds and whites these days?  If you poured a splash of Zin into a glass of Pinot blanc…it could come out looking lavender, couldn’t it?  I mean, not that you’d want to….Wasn’t that a wonderful Sainte Catherine’s from Weinbach on Saturday?  I love weekends; I wish it could be Saturday afternoon forever.” 

 Kit smiled and slipped his plate into the dishwasher.  

“You’d get bored, but the Riesling was superb.  I need to get back to work, and so do you.  Read the newspaper.  See you tonight.” 

“So we’re really not boycotting quartz crystals?”

An Aside

The Seaman of our noontime chat is Barrett Seaman, a trustee at Hamilton College and a former reporter for The New York Times.  His 2005 masterpiece of research and writing is Binge:  Campus Life in an Age of Disconnection and Excess.  I include the book in the annotated bibliography on my website, www.Beckeracademic.com.  

Seaman is a proponent for reform of US alcohol laws, and he builds a strong case.  He further argues that college drinking is primarily a social construction and only secondarily a legal consideration.  An educational sociologist, I, too, privilege the social over the legal in this and other aspects of college life.   

Sloshing into the Fray

After lunch, I picked up The Baltimore Sun and read Stephen Kiehl’s front page article, “Colleges:  Drinking Age ‘Not Working’” (August 19, 2008).  The Sun is strictly a hometown newspaper, and Kiehl pursues the local angle.  He opens with the Maryland officials who endorse the initiative.  Included are the chancellor of our state university system and the presidents of University of Maryland–College Park (our flagship state school and home of the Terrapins), The Johns Hopkins University and Goucher College.  

Kiehl tries to give equal space to opponents of The Amethyst Initiative.  Caroline Cash, executive director of Mothers Against Drunk Driving (MADD) for Maryland and Delaware comes off looking both petty and silly in her disappointment that the signatories neglected to contact her organization before launching their initiative.  Call me delusional, but I cannot see William R. Brody, president of Johns Hopkins, asking for the endorsement of MADD in a national campaign to reconsider the drinking age.  

By their nature, top administrators are slow to rouse.  In Tolkein’s terms, they are the ents of the academy.  For one hundred college and university presidents to issue a collective statement calling for national discussion of a social and legal problem is an event so rare as to be outside normative prescriptions.  However, one thing ought to be expected, even when the ground rules are being established on the fly.  Having taken a stand on an inflammatory issue, this group of circumspect women and men will not be easily deterred.  

Once an Intellectual….

Reporter Kiehl didn’t provide the link between amethysts and alcohol, so I looked further afield than my newspaper.  Justin Pope, writing online for the Associated Press, identified the founder of the initiative and explained its name.  John McCardell, past president of the magnificent Middlebury College, started the organization, and he selected a name with deeply intellectual origins.  According to McCardell, the ancient Greeks (think Homer, Sophocles, Plato and the gang) believed that purple quartz crystals, when set in drinking vessels, had the happy property of preventing drunkenness.  You can’t prove it by me, because the amethyst trivia never came up in my first year philosophy class where I fell in love with Plato and shed tears of frustration over Aristotle.  

The Good Ole Days 

I attended Callison College, at University of the Pacific, in the dark ages before Congress passed the 1984 National Minimum Drinking Age Act.  It was a very small college, located in the San Joaquin Valley of Northern California.  The San Joaquin was, and is wine grape country.  The vines have grown older; the wines have gotten better.  The neighboring town of Lodi now boasts its own appellation as an American Viticultural Area (AVA).  

Back when the respectable, middle-aged wife of my Japanese history professor worked in a tasting room, there were no AVAs.  There was wine-drinking, on weekends and for weddings at wineries.  There were seminars and dinners in the homes of faculty where wines were served and enjoyed with discrimination by those who so chose. 

In the autumn of my senior year, when I was twenty, two Callison professors hosted a Riesling tasting.  None of us, faculty and students alike, knew Rieslings, but we believed that ignorance of the noble white grape was insufferable, if understandable in a place where the local wines are red.  In preparation for the event I walked the eight blocks to a liquor store and asked the clerk to assist me in my selection.  I considered my purchase carefully.  I believe we all did.  

Twelve or fifteen of us gathered in a bilious green Victorian flat a couple miles south of campus.  We uncorked bottles.  We swirled glasses and sniffed bouquets and jotted notes.  We compared, tasted and compared again.  It was serious and it was fun.  Before the sun dropped behind Mount Diablo, I had learned a smidgen about Rieslings, German and Alsatian.  I had also experienced the novel pleasure of having my judgements accepted as equal to those of faculty whose erudition far surpassed mine in the classroom. 

Against the Oak Grain

My patient, passionate education in Riesling persisted against the tide of toasty Chardonnays pouring out of Napa and Sonoma.  For a decade, I concentrated on the Europeans.  I didn’t discover American Riesling until I moved to the Finger Lakes region of New York for doctoral study.  The Finger Lakes AVA produces what many (outside the Pacific Northwest, that is) consider to be the finest whites in this country.  Over the past three decades, the vines above Keuka, Seneca and Cayuga Lakes have matured handsomely.  In exceptional years and in the hands of master vintners like Hermann J. Weimer, these Rieslings acquire a stunning complexity.  

When I first began teaching at Hobart and William Smith Colleges on the northern end of Seneca Lake, I could invite students to my home for seminars and dinners, serving and enjoying fine wines in moderation, as my own academic mentors had done.  By the year of my resignation from the Colleges, that was no longer possible.  The drinking age had risen, and the faculty had grown fearful of serving alcohol to students.  Opportunities to entertain outside our status groups dried up.  A once-fluid hierarchy of knowledge creation between faculty and students ossified into unchanging social fact.   

Looking Back, Looking Forward

Would my experiences as a student and a scholar of the social sciences have been poorer without the education in wine?  Would last Saturday afternoon have been as sublime without the grand cru created by Collette Faller and her daughters at Domaine Weinbach?  Inevitably, my replies would be subjective and anecdotal.  I fear that in the discussion cum battle now engaged over the drinking age in this country, there will be scant space for personal musings.  I fear there will be no room to talk about appropriate occasions for moderate consumption in liberal education.  

with limited cheers,

dkb