THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Friday, March 15, 1996 TAG: 9603150061
SECTION: DAILY BREAK PAGE: E1 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: BY PHILIP WALZER, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: Long : 118 lines
IN THEIR NEW book, ``The Abandoned Generation,'' Duke University professors William Willimon and Thomas Naylor point to Charlottesville as an example of the problem with colleges today.
A University of Virginia administrator tells them: ``Our school has no opinion on alcohol.''
Huh?
``Absolutely,'' they quote the official as saying. ``If we had an opinion about alcohol, if we made some public statement about it to our students, that would leave us open to litigation, would increase our liability.
``Therefore, if students drink or don't drink, we have no opinion on the matter.''
Willimon and Naylor repeat some of the arguments that other critics have leveled at U.S. colleges: professors teach too little, universities are too big, students are getting too many A's.
But the real problem, they say, is that colleges are failing to educate students in morality, failing to build character, failing to create a sense of community. It's time to bring values back to campus.
``Students are first abandoned by their parents and society,'' Naylor said in an interview, ``and they come looking for direction, for a sense of meaning, purpose and community, and they don't get a lot of help from the university.''
Willimon sees a ``kind of conspiracy'' between students and professors. ``Students say, `Stay out of our lives; we're 19 years old.' Faculty say: `We treat them like responsible adults.'
``We say, `No, they're 19; we ought to treat them like they're 19.' ''
The two authors come at college life from two different perspectives: Willimon is dean of the chapel at Duke; Naylor is an emeritus economics professor who teaches part-time in Vermont.
But they share the same dark view of campus life today. They date the main problems to the '60s, when, in the rush of freedom and experimentation, colleges abandoned the notion of in loco parentis - or acting as a surrogate parent to students. Trouble was, they didn't replace it with anything.
``Neither of us favors going back to in loco parentis,'' Naylor said. ``It's not shape up or ship out. We're saying faculty ought to treat students as friends. If a student is your friend, that carries an obligation to care for them, and we don't think that's going on.''
Some of the other problems have developed more recently. One is students' attraction to computers, which they say destroy the sense of community on campus.
To Willimon and Naylor, one of the most troubling aspects of campus life is alcohol abuse. In Virginia, two Radford University students died in alcohol-related incidents last month.
Too many administrators, they say, accept drinking as a teen-age rite of passage. Instead, they should be trying to speak up against alcoholism in the same way that Charles Marsh, a former president of Wofford College, attacked racism a few decades ago. ``Because most of you come from South Carolina,'' he boldly told a freshman assembly, ``that means that most of you happen also to be racist. This college hopes to change that about you through your studies here.''
To keep students from drink, they suggest colleges offer more activities - from coffeehouses to environmental groups - and encourage more interaction between professors and undergraduates. ``You can wander for hours and never see another adult (on campus), which some of the students regard as heaven,'' Willimon said. ``All I've got to say is that is a weird way of growing up.''
Some of their other suggestions make them sound a lot more like parents than close friends. How about larger class loads and - yawn! - Saturday morning classes? Students have too much free time on their hands, the pair says, so if they took five classes a semester, instead of the usual four, they'd keep out of trouble.
``We want to make college tougher,'' Naylor said. ``We think we're practically giving degrees away. Students are taking fewer courses, doing less work, but getting better grades.''
Willimon said the ``chief howls'' against that idea would probably come from professors, not students: ``Faculty zealously guard their time and value it.'' But the response from students hasn't been entirely enthusiastic, either.
``My own son said, `Are you nuts? I can't take five courses,' '' Willimon recalled. The son's friend put it more bluntly: ``Your old man's book sucks.''
Terri Mellinger, a senior at Old Dominion University majoring in philosophy, agrees that professors are spending less time with students. But she said that's because of budget cuts: Class sizes are bigger, and overworked professors have less free time.
She also said Saturday classes and a five-course load would be too much for adult students or those who hold down jobs. ``I'm not sure it's realistic to require somebody who is trying to maintain a household and also works a part-time job to take five courses,'' she said.
In ``The Abandoned Generation'' (Eerdmans Publishing Co., $11), the authors lament the lack of a ``strong sense of community among students, among faculty and between students and faculty - a sense of belonging and connectedness.'' To change the situation, they'd get rid of the tenure system, which usually rewards solitary research at the expense of teaching.
And they'd break up the often-anonymous college experience into a more manageable size. For example, they'd encourage the creation of ``residential colleges'' - here, they applaud U.Va. for moving in this direction - where small groups of students share meals, activities and classes. Often, a few professors live in each college.
And they suggest breaking off undergraduate programs from big universities to increase the number of small liberal arts colleges. To help fund that switch, they'd pare down graduate programs. ``For many states,'' they write, ``there is little need for multiple state-supported medical schools, law schools and engineering schools.'' ILLUSTRATION: Color photos
Duke University professors Thomas Naylor, top, and William Willimon
are authors of "The Abandoned Generation."
B\W photo
Willimon is dean of the chapel at Duke; Naylor is an emeritus
economics professor.
Color staff illustration by Sam Hundley/The Virginian-Pilot
by CNB