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Friday, April 23, 2004
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[Pls. note: "Gated" Correspondence]
23 April 04 Dear fellow members of the U.O.C.: We are writing to you today because of the recent extraordinary media attention devoted to so-called "economic diversity" issues on American university campuses. (See last Sunday's New York Times magazine opinion piece by Walter Benn Michaels, and yesterday's front page NYT's article on the same subject.) While we can understand how some of you may see this emergent national interest in wealth distribution issues in higher education as threatening, we would like to suggest that this situation could be a real opening for us and our concerns. The Undergraduate Oligarchs Consortium has always been dedicated to the maintenance of a few special places where POMs (people of means) could pursue their educations among strong role models in a resentment-free atmosphere. As we all know, we have made great strides in terms of student population at certain schools, where a combination of networking and trustee activism has produced a pretty uniformly well-off group along with class-appropriate campus amenities (there is now, for instance, a heliport at Bennington). One longstanding and sensitive area of concern, however, has been the striking disparity between professors' salaries and student assets at these schools. Whereas historically the American university professor was drawn from the upper or at the very least upper middle class, a sharp downward tilt in the last few decades has created a restive, sometimes abrasive faculty with whom we have difficulty interacting. The gentle unworldly renaissance man of yore has been replaced by the aggressive worldly careerist of today, who loudly ridicules that earlier model as a "dilettante." Economic diversity cuts both ways. We have a right to ask that consideration be given to broadening the professoriate so that included among it would be adults with whom we can identify and whom we can respect as our equals. It is frankly embarrassing to be pandered to by servile professors eager to stay in our good graces so that we will give them the positive course evaluations which will guarantee them a raise. It would be nice to be around professors less interested in the bottom line and more interested in their subject matter. And speaking of subject matter: the absence of appropriate role models among the faculty continues to have serious educational consequences for us. How many of us have sat through lectures on Henry James taught by people who graduated from public school in Hamtramck? We will be calling a general membership meeting, where we will draft a letter to the administration, as soon as Josh is back from Bermuda. Steering Committee, UOC. |