Unreality 101

     This week my daughter, who will be a freshman at Providence College where I teach, attended what is called "orientation."  It is a two-day affair designed to introduce students to the life of the mind, not by reminding them of the precious heritage of scholarship to which their professors will have devoted their energies and what portion of talent nature has seen fit to bestow upon them, but by advising them on What to Do if Roommate is Drunk and Unconscious, How not to Overload the Washing Machines, and, alas, What Constitutes Rape.  I have only the sketchiest details about that last part of the initiation; Jessica chose that moment to appear to have to use the bathroom, which is one of a young lady's unquestioned prerogatives.  None of this was free, in either important sense of the word: she had to attend, under threat of losing her spot in the freshman class, and her father had to cough up a couple hundred for the privilege. 

     Well, it was apparently cheerful and chirpy enough, and she did meet a few people whom it is unlikely she will run into again anytime soon, but one never knows.  She also had the pleasure of sitting next to a friendly young Nepalese man who couldn't help scowling when a patronizing video informed him that "diversity" was important at Providence College, that some people were white and some people were black, some people were Catholic and some were Protestant and some were Jews, and some, and a special point was made of this, some people were gay.  Ah, the joy of being a mascot!  All this, I imagine, to a tune that some parents here will recognize: "And I say hey!  What a wonderful time of day!  We can learn to work and play, and get along with each other!"

     It could have been far worse, I know.  Providence College does try hard to be a Catholic school; that is, it tries hard to be Catholic, and to be a school.  The organizers of the orientation, most of them friendly women in the dutifully anagrammatic Students Active In Leadership office, don't really mean to undermine either the life of the mind or the Catholic faith, about which subjects they are as innocent as golden retrievers, nor do they mean to reject the solemn inculcation of such natural virtues as temperance, courage, and chastity, whereof no doubt they would approve, if some kind soul would but once make their acquaintance with the notions.  But it dawns on me now that, in a way that I had never understood, such folks do not simply work at the college.  They put the college in its place.  They and their helpers in Residence Life and Student Affairs and this Center and that Epicycle do more to define what it means to go to school than any professor does, and perhaps more, though this is still debatable, than do all the professors put together.  And we professors deserve no better.  We are our own part of the mental demolition team.

     Of course it is all unreality.  It cannot survive, says the optimist in me.  Then my mind returns to a room in an old library in the small town of Eastport, Maine.  Maybe someone here has been there?  I see what used to be the main room, built in that old style for libraries, the marble pilasters faintly reminiscent of Greece and Rome.  In one corner there is a large hutch, a built-in bookshelf behind glass doors; forbidding tomes of nineteenth century Maine history rest there, resolving into the dust.  In another corner, hung high upon the wall, stands a lovely painting in the Hudson Valley style: its title reads "Cherry Valley, Pennsylvania," and the hand-carved and gilt frame alone is probably worth thousands.  But the rest of the room is noisy with triviality: plasticene shelves for periodicals, all blaring color and vulgarity, the new pictograms for a people too impatient to read and too intemperate to think.  When I asked the librarian about the painting, she said she didn't know who the painter was, nor was she interested.  Eventually it will go.  If they are smart, they will sell it at auction, to buy a scanner or something else of eternal use.  The books too will go.  If they are smart, they will send them to a mausoleum in Augusta: a Maine Historical Mausoleum, next to an Art Mausoleum; those places where truly popular culture goes after it is dead.  The transfer will open up that corner for kid lit, no question.

     What was it like, at the uneasy verge of the Dark Ages?  Maybe like a school, my school or anybody's, fighting a progressive amnesia.  Maybe like that beautiful old room in Eastport.  The inscription outside the main door reads "Public Library".  I can think of a good alternative.

     [On the other hand ... The President of the college gave a brilliant and beautiful homily today at Mass for the freshmen, attended by probably around 3000 people, identifying the primary goal for the new students at the school to discover the Law God has given us, to help us forge a more intimate relationship with Him; and the Man who has revealed that Law to us is Christ, by his teachings of course, but most powerfully by his life.  Christ is our Law and our life.  We are fighting the good fight here, but not everybody is engaged in the battle, or is even aware that there is one.  But we are not going down without a fight.  Let everything I have said about the college be taken in that context; I'm disappointed that we are sometimes inconsistent, when I should rather be deeply thankful that we have donned the uniforms and strapped on the bayonets.]

Comments

[DGP]

Yes, it's sad. May God have mercy on those of us whose malice or negligence hastened the end! But even these gems of beauty and wisdom from past decades were neither pure nor flawless, and consequently they must return to the dust from which they were shaped. This is the fate of all human traditions -- until Kingdom come.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>> I have only the sketchiest details about that last part of the initiation; Jessica chose that moment to appear to have to use the bathroom, which is one of a young lady's unquestioned prerogatives. None of this was free, in either important sense of the word: she had to attend, under threat of losing her spot in the freshman class, and her father had to cough up a couple hundred for the privilege. <<<

You'l be happy to know the same atmosphere permeats both business and the military. I remember working with one military unit on an experimental training program, and having the hardest time getting a few hours in which we could actually to out into the field to practice. Turns out most of their day was eaten up with sexual harrassment training, HIV awareness, racial sensitivity training, anti-drug training and what-not. "When do you train to fight?" I asked the sergeant with whom I was working. He just nodded his head and gave me a sad smile.

A few year later, when I was consulting to a major aerospace company, I was meeting with my clients when they abruptly adjourned to go to some motivational guru's self-help spiel. I tagged along, hoping we could get out of it and go back to work. The auditorium was packed, and they guru seemed pleased as punch about it.

"Wow!", he said breathlessly, "This is really great turnout. I don't know what to call it".

From the back of the room, some disgruntled engineer chimed out, "Mandatory!"

[Judy Warner]

When my husband worked at the National Rifle Association, some bright spark of a human resources person decided to institute diversity training. The number of employees is large and the training took place in small groups, so it was to be spread over many days. After a few days people began to notice that the training was increasing racial hostility among the staff exponentially; there hadn't really been any problems before. The training was abruptly terminated. Would that colleges and other organizations could be so observant and capable of taking action.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>"And I say hey! What a wonderful time of day! We can learn to work and play, and get along with each other!"<<<

I'm glad to see I'm not the only closet fan of "Arthur".

[Matthias]

My company has annual required training on diversity for managers. It requires us to solemnly pledge allegiance to two principles: one, we will never ever ever allow ethnicity to play any role whatsoever in any hiring decision; and two, we will diligently strive to increase the representation of certain targeted ethnic groups in certain targeted job types.

I learned to not ask questions after the first one.

[Bobby Winters]

>>>My company has annual required training on diversity for managers. It requires us to solemnly pledge allegiance to two principles: one, we will never ever ever allow ethnicity to play any role whatsoever in any hiring decision; and two, we will diligently strive to increase the representation of certain targeted ethnic groups in certain targeted job types.

I learned to not ask questions after the first one.<<<

I assume you asked how you could do 2 if you held to 1.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>I assume you asked how you could do 2 if you held to 1.<<<

Consistency is the bugbear of little minds.

[Matthias]

Yes, I asked that, the first time I took the training. Never again!

Consistency is the bugbear of the unemployed.

[AUSTIN]

Judging from my children and their friends, ages 26 to 8, such diversity training gets to be background noise that no one listens to. It becomes something to laugh about--such workshops run together with a common denominator: earnest adults speaking drivel. Next step: classics come the new counter-cultural way to rebel.

[Stuart Koehl]

>>>udging from my children and their friends, ages 26 to 8, such diversity training gets to be background noise that no one listens to. It becomes something to laugh about--such workshops run together with a common denominator: earnest adults speaking drivel. <<<

Certainly the case in my daughter's school. After a long assembly on the need to respect people of alternative sexual orientations (this being in sixth grade, most of them needed first to be told what sexual orientation is (Quoth one class wag: "Either you'er straigt or slightly curved")), the entire thing was the object of ridicule by the end of the week. I think that fact that "gay" is synonymous with "lame" among the pre-teen set shows just how counterproductive forced sensitivity can be.

[shulamite]

Mr. Esolen,

Loved your "Purgutory", am waiting for "Paradiso" to come out in paperback. As a thomist, I especially liked the way you updated the prose in the Summa Contra Gentiles in the appendix to the book.

As to the point, I think it is as bad as you say, and even worse. At best, you can hope for your child to learn nothing. Hopefully she will.

[Tony Esolen]

Dear Shulamite,

Thank you. It will be appearing very soon, I'm told, probably some time this fall.

[luthien]

My freshman orientation was so horrendous that my family now refers to the ordeal as freshman disorientation:) it was the most pointless $117 my parents have ever spent on me. The most memorable part of it was when my parents let me skip the last day, which was only quasi-mandatory, to go to the Renaissance Faire for my best friend's birthday. Yes, it was so bad that they let me skip it...we did *nothing* of value-played humiliating icebreakers, learned how to binge drink at frat parties without geting raped, learned that if you smoke pot in the dorms you will get caught, and, umm, I kinda forget what else we did besides eat a horrible lunch from the school caf.

[luthien]

Oh, the other funny part of orientation? A bunch of freshmen were arrested for underage drinking on moving-in night, before orientation had even started.

[Dan Reed]

Dr. Esolen,

I'd like to think that the 'good fight' is being fought at PC (or in general among those who can see the battle lines) but in many ways it seems like we have retreated to already indefensible borders, and we continue to concede territory to buy time.

I always remember how different the life lived at PC was from the advertised version. Those like yourself who attempt to live the stated values are undercut every day by those who view a Christian heritage as an embarassing legacy. And when the students see faith--or even humility before the question of faith--as a lifestyle choice, it takes a rock to not be swept up in the dorm culture that could not be more opposed to the Church's teaching. (By the way, I was no rock, in case anyone thinks I'm being preachy.)

I think the school believes it must be tolerant or it will be rejected by the world, while the world is completely intolerant in its demand that we have no foundational principle but pleasure.

But your hope gives me hope, though maybe for the world in general more than for PC in particular.

[PracticingChristian]

Thank you for your insights into College-Intro-2006. Looks like Providence College has changed a little since I chased Medieval History degree there many years ago.

[Another Janet]

Thomas Aquinas College?