The University: Everybody's Gold Mine
Solomon, Barbara P.
The following article, which provides a critical view of the Amer. ican university from a student's perspective, comes from a young writer who in the past was a student at Columbia...
...The relationship between the part-time expert and the university is vague and impersonal...
...she the world of the intellect...
...Trilling (and Leslie Fiedler is another) are more forthright than the sociologists...
...No, the loss of today's generation is not in our having to make do with the West End Bar instead of Stewart's Cafeteria in the Village...
...In this era of the "newNixon," the intellectual and liberal is coming into his own again, he is now blue-chip stock...
...The other publication which beck ons invitingly to the student comes from within the university...
...I WAS REMINDED of Gingrich's fiasco at Columbia when I read Diana Trilling's account, "The Other Night At Columbia," in the Spring 1959 Partisan Review...
...The clever ones quickly learn how to navigate...
...I doubt that last year's Hunter meeting, when Kerouac spoke, would have been such a mess if the cameramen and radiomen had not been a stimulant to the wildness for the purpose of mass audience entertainment...
...Today, industry besieges the university with student prizes...
...A good example of business's misalliance with the university is Esquire magazine's "cultural" get-together with Columbia University a year ago last fall...
...Or should they feel mollified because Mrs...
...UNLESS HE Is an extraordinary human being, the new part-time teacher, with his commitments to other worlds, both intellectual and industrial, carries into his classroom the sense that what really counts is happening outside...
...they have conducted the studies encouraging the students to reveal their private lives...
...Now, I have no quarrel with Esquire for trading its half-naked females for the works of established serious writers, peppered with an occasional newcomer, and I realize that this is the way they started out many years ago...
...But as for the more serious studies, why are they made...
...Today's student is proclaimed a failure before he starts...
...In the Greek sense, they have ceased to be teachers...
...The student is grateful for the recognition and the financial reward—but he also realizes that industry is conducting a talent hunt on the campus...
...Indeed, apprenticeship is replacing scholarship...
...Indeed, what does one of our greatest universities have in common with a magazine that until recently most parents preferred their children not to see...
...The thoughts, ideals and private lives of the students have been picked at and probed into by teachers, behavioral scientists and critics...
...What use do they serve...
...And if the thirties was such a valid experience, why are the survivors unable to communicate and make it meaningful today...
...ican university from a student's perspective, comes from a young writer who in the past was a student at Columbia University...
...Now the popular media people have also joined in...
...Yet she and Gingrich do have something in common, and that is an underlying contempt for the student...
...he no longer devotes his interest or energies to the local publication...
...Listening to the speakers argue back and forth about the relative merits of the campus as being a good or bad atmosphere in which the writer could "create," I had the uncomfortable feeling that I was listening to some voyagers remarking on the merits of plane travel over sea travel...
...At the end of the evening the chic and fashionable crowded up front to meet the speakers, and the students went home...
...Some of these gatherings are of more benefit to industry on a talent hunt than to the students, who are of an age when they should be more concerned with learning and less aware of "jobs...
...But I am concerned when a mighty university like Columbia, to the disgust of its own students, sells itself short to Madison Avenue...
...Critics like Mrs...
...True, he wanted questions from the audience, but they were to be short and snappy...
...It might be added that, because of space restrictions, we have had to hold it for several issues, during which time a variety of public disclosures give its argument even more bite than it seemed to have when we first received it.—EDITORS...
...Apparently he had been angered by the earlier session which had been conducted by a faculty member in a leisurely university manner...
...Gingrich merely pretended to be interested in the student, as a backdrop for his anniversary celebration...
...What they can do is let the students invite their own speakers, and close the meetings to the general public and press...
...In today's busy world of conferences and meetings, schedules have a way of overlapping...
...The faculty cannot solve this problem, which has gotten out of hand, by storming off the platforms at these gatherings, or by presiding half-heartedly, just to get the whole show over with...
...His friend shrugged his shoulders...
...The brave ladies finally decided to attend the poetry reading, prepared to hold their noses against the stench...
...She examines the case of Ginsberg and implies that if the teachers had not turned their backs when Ginsberg and all the other "lost boys of the forties" had wanted to talk, there might not be a "Beat Generation" today...
...Oh well," he replied, "Viva Esquire...
...The atmosphere is filled with tension and artificial stimulation, where the message of "get smart quick" is constantly blared forth...
...Does the Columbia faculty think that you can buy a good name and honest intellectual conscience overnight...
...He represents the commercial world...
...Why all the negative conclusions...
...Yet she sees nothing wrong in revealing intimate facts about Ginsberg's life known to her only because her husband was his teacher and confidant...
...He concludes that the university has tremendous awe and respect for this outside world and wholeheartedly embraces its values...
...The part-time professor hired by the university to give the students a chance to study with an "expert in the field" is in reality a man harassed by two jobs...
...In focus ing on these magazines rather than on the genuine undergraduate publication, the student is unaware that he is up against another kind of professionalism— intellectual professionalism —and that the attitudes of this world are just as preconceived and rigid as those of the commercial world...
...The first thing the student becomes aware of in the new university atmosphere is hurry: hurry and a fantastic respect for success...
...Generally, the conclusions of these studies show the young to be a rather dismal, apathetic lot...
...Trilling saw nothing amiss in stating that she, as a faculty wife, went to a Columbia University function expecting the audience, of whom a large part were obviously Columbia students, to "smell bad" and look seedy...
...Not one of the speakers mentioned his role or obligation as a teacher...
...I am using writing as an example, but, in different ways, the same essential experience occurs in the language, engineering, science, journalism, drama and government "fields...
...For her (and all the others) the great overwhelming and irrevocable tragedy of today's youth is that they were not born in her time...
...The core of her article deals with Ginsberg's triumphant return to Columbia for an evening of poetry reading...
...But what about the students...
...Undoubtedly, the majority of educators, critics, intellectuals and sociologists of a certain age come from the ranks of preSecond World War political liberals...
...But our moral destruction may come ever so gently via the Drake room...
...He himself is under all sorts of pressures...
...But one's birthdate is never one's "tragedy...
...It has been replaced by an excessive emphasis on career...
...Why all this attention to the adolescent's views on society...
...Her concern for the young is mixed with antagonism...
...Turnabout is fair play...
...Mrs...
...He was Gingrich, the editor, trying to organize a "brain-storm...
...The world and the university have examined the student...
...Walking along Upper Broadway I heard one student excitedly remark to his friend how much he would have liked to ask a certain question of one of the writers, but he hadn't wanted to make a fool of himself in front of that Gingrich character...
...Trilling deplores the ugliness of the Life cameraman with flashbulb poised at Ginsberg's poetry reading...
...It is they, uncertain and ashamed of their attitudes, who have isolated their life experience rather than let it take root and flower...
...Mrs...
...But we can ab sorb the past...
...Trilling echoes the concern of university administrators throughout the country over the chaotic, frenetic atmosphere created when writers such as Kerouac are invited to speak...
...Often assistants have to take over the classes and the student quickly learns that he is only of secondary importance to the busy teacher...
...Angrily she describes the Columbia audience as being crazily young . . . so few of the girls are pretty, so few of the boys manly...
...Unable to make his audience respond with the precision of a business conference, Gingrich was reduced to the obscenity of insulting and mocking them, producing only a hostile silence for his troubles...
...Two, subconsciously, at a very young age he molds his talents to what he thinks is wanted of him...
...Is there a law that says Life magazine must attend student functions...
...Mrs...
...Too slow, and too much student participation...
...Most teachers tacitly accept the public view of themselves as second-rate citizens, and are much more easily intimidated by the business world than people realize...
...Diana Trilling, in her article expressed apparent serious concern for the student, and one student in particular...
...Nor should human beings have the egotism to feel that they should live in an "ideal time...
...Scholarship is no longer an end in itself...
...His teacher was generally someone who thought of teaching as a full-time profession...
...Discussed at some length was the new phenomenon of the writer-teacher...
...This metamorphosis finally culminated in a wedding—a literary symposium at Columbia University's McMillan theatre with Esquire as the aggressive groom, Columbia as the uncertain bride and the students as the embarrassed bastard children...
...They pick the professors who can "help them along professionally...
...In an attempt to do away with the ivory tower approach to education, the universities have endorsed a quick, slick professionalism...
...Having been obsessed with feelings of confusion, guilt and bewilderment since the war, they have buried their own self-hatred and frustration by turning on the next generation and damning it in advance...
...This is the "real" world, and to it one must pay homage...
...I have no quarrel with this suggestion—but the tone of her article is incredible...
...The university's complex alliance with the subsidizing world of big business, mass media, foundation grants and research projects, plus its role as home base for the footloose intellectual, leads to regarding the education of the young as a minor concern...
...More and more courses which are essentially apprenticeship courses aimed at specific careers are available to the undergraduate student...
...But especially, why Esquire...
...He need only not appear an amateur...
...They, not the student, have called the outside world in...
...Trilling expected to face her husband in the classroom with the respect to which he is entitled...
...Why has that generation drawn a curtain of silence...
...She, as a critic, writes only for the most rarefied reviews...
...Students receiving the silver invitations announcing the two-part symposium in honor of Esquire's twentyfifth anniversary co-sponsored by Esquire and Columbia's School of General Studies failed to see any connection between the two institutions...
...This practice, however, has its repercussions...
...What possible harm is there, one can ask, in allowing a young writer publication in a respectable, established magazine...
...THE THEME of this symposium was the writer's place in America...
...Her husband, Lionel Trilling, an outstanding critic and writer, is also a professor at Columbia University...
...The reverse is that the young are too old...
...The universities, however, have brought this on themselves by making the student into a public animal...
...THE GREATEST damage done to the student, however, is the attitude taken toward him by the generation which should be showing the way...
...yet now they are worried about student exhibitionism...
...Now, how does that same world and university size up from the student's point of view...
...We cannot transport ourselves into the glory that was Greece, the brilliance of the Renaissance or the golden age of Stewart's Cafeteria...
...For if we are to survive anything, we will survive by being of our own time...
...Because of competition from the new pseudo-girlie magazines like Gent and Playboy, and a decline in its advertising sales, about a year or so ago Esquire decided to become more respectable...
...On the surface, none...
...So far as I can see, it is a case of hoping that the blind will lead the blind...
...This was Allan Ginsberg, the poet, who is also an ex-student of her husband...
...Trilling did not find them as dirty as she had expected...
...Obviously the mass magazines and TV have a stake in the student because their business is to explore whatever topics are currently in vogue...
...My own guess is that Esquire managed to appear very shiny, powerful 'and magically impressive to the Columbia faculty...
...This is the little magazine serving the needs of the intellectual community which has come to rely on the universities to provide a good address...
...We've come a long way from the time when the Pepsi-Cola prize was unique...
...The educators and intellectuals have lost their way, they are no longer sure of their own ethical values...
...The modern teacher-student relationship is more practical than spiritual...
...She quite casually writes of how she and other faculty wives had scores of back-and-forth telephone calls: should they go watch the freak show, or should they not...
...In the last decade or so the American university has been put to unprecedented use by industry, the mass media and research teams, as well as by intellectuals who find it a handy home base...
...On the surface Diana Trilling and Arnold Gingrich are quite different...
...WHO, INDEED, has ever thought to teach this generation reticence...
...The professor is forced to eke out his income in ways he regards as not being wholly honest— grants, international junkets, excessive publishing, etc...
...YEARS AGO, the Freshman student in English Composition was of interest to no one but himself, his teacher, his friends and his relatives...
...A student has his eyes on Mademoiselle or the Paris Review...
...One, the prestige and importance of the undergraduate magazine has suffered...
...Above all, he warned, no student opinion...
...The future is so golden and so little is asked of him...
...Presumably she wrote the article be...
...Unfortunately, this will not occur until the large university rediscovers its own attitude toward its prime function...
...This new, rootless Academia has little awareness of itself and no real notion of its obligations to the university...
...Today his young counterpart quickly gets to a "creative writing workshop" and as a "young writer" has a direct marketable value to the publisher always on the lookout for new talent...
...The speakers on the platform looked uncomfortable as they watched him lose his temper...
...In the name of necessary research, scores of studies such as The Unsilent Generation by Otto Butz have been made...
...Instead they have turned on their students...
...One result has been a failure on the part of the university to maintain itself as a value center for the young...
...Both the professors and the university administration shower the student with opportunities to meet his future employers, and, of course, the new American way of life has become ever onward and upward with fellowships and grants...
...Though she is proud that her youth was a time of passion and feeling, she, like Fiedler, seems a little ashamed of what the feeling was about...
...The most shocking feature of the symposium was the way Arnold Gingrich, editor of Esquire, treated the students while he was presiding over the second meeting...
...According to her the thirties was a glorious time, and intellectuals never had it better...
...Why any magazine...
...Are these same students, after being called "rabble" and "hordes of barbarians" by Mrs...
...Their relation to business is becoming increasingly intimate...
...Even worse, the student tends to become a public animal, fair game for all comers...
...cause she was worried that the intellectual and teacher have failed to lead the student...
...I do fear, however, that it will remain a publishing source of good writers only so long as quality writing has a good trade-in value with the advertiser, and it is not to be counted on when times get rough for the intellectual...
...One reason the individual professor cannot be more forceful in maintaining his position against the onslaught of the outer world is that in today's society it is hard to feel strong and worthwhile when one earns substandard wages...
...If the ship sinks, let's all go down together...
...What is the effect of all this on the student...
...In all good things there is historical continuity, one generation gives to the next...
...They cannot abdicate responsibility and teach responsibility...
...She feels that those were the days when Jews were real Jews, Negroes were real Negroes and Stewart's Cafeteria was a wonderfully gay, witty Village cafeteria, not like the dreary West End Bar today's Columbia students have to put up with...
...Affiliation with the name of a good university is an excellent way for business and advertising to buy prestige cheap, and prestige is a very valuable commodity these days...
...He also gets a premature notion of his own success or failure...
...THE UNIVERSITY SERVES industry in more ways than by merely being a free employment agency...
Vol. 7 • April 1960 • No. 2
