Wilkins Talk, April 1994
I am disappointed to report that my intended talk, announced here last year, "A Deconstructionist Analysis of "Little Rabbit Foo Foo," I have been unable to complete. Although it might perhaps be important in this Easter season to analyze some of the auxiliary symbolism that has crept into the celebration of our rituals, my hypothesis that the "Good Fairy" is in fact a radical feminist who resorts to apocalyptic violence in order to negate the excess erotic masculinity of Foo Foo I have been unable to prove, not least because the nature of Foo Foo's relation to the fieldmice is ambiguous. The Good Fairy's resemblance to Mrs. Doubtfire notwithstanding, I believe the resolution of the narrative structure will deny any gender ambiguity regarding the instrument of angelic vengence. Some textual difficulties also remain unresolved at this time; certainly the gender analysis of Foo Foo must turn significantly upon whether or not he is a `rabbit' or, as some texts would have it, a `little bunny'. I am of the opinion that the textual transformation of the narrative rendering `rabbit' as `little bunny' is most likely yet another effort at gender neutralization of Foo Foo, resorting not merely to hermeneutic means but to direct textual alteration. But I am afraid that until the matter of the authenticity of the Foo Foo text can be established, the definitive interpretation of the underlying gender intentionality must be post-poned. Perhaps next year.
Over the last several years I have tried to convey in these talks something of the spirit of this place both as an academy of higher learning and as a community. I have never ceased to be excited by and about Sewanee. I heard the VC say the other day that Sewanee is probably unique in higher education for its quality and especially for its approach to learning. If you come here you will find that that quality and approach to learning is not something held only in the hands of students and faculty. It is held in the hands of a dedicated staff and community who are willing to work far beyond their job descriptions to make Sewanee what it is. Nor is Sewanee's quality found only in the classroom. For a few minutes tonight I want to argue that this quality is typically not found in the classrooms--good as our instruction is--but is found somewhere else. Not somewhere in the sense of another place so much as in another zone, another mode.
Let me see if I can come at it this way: some of you might have seen our TV clips on Good Morning America a couple of years ago. Let me tell you how it came about. I was just at the end of my 8:00 class when the administrative channel on my beeper went off: "Call Mr. Watson at once." Tom Watson is our Vice-President for University Relations and usually when I get this kind of beeper alert, it means something serious, damn serious. I went to the nearest phone and called. Mr. Watson said, "Jerry, we have just learned that the GMA bus [they were on their tour of the South] has just left Chattanooga and will pass from Monteagle to Winchester on its way to Nashville. We are all sitting here talking about the possibility of trying to attract them to drive through Sewanee. What do you think?" I cut to the bottom line and said, "Watson, do you want me to hijack the bus?" Long pause. He can't answer that question directly. "Well, we thought it would be a really good opportunity for the university." Good opportunity! We couldn't buy that kind of publicity if we had the money. Tom Watson and I have worked together for years. I knew he wanted that bus. I asked him, "Have you called ABC in New York to get them to help?" He said, "Yes. We already tried that. They said a flat `No'; the itinerary was set and couldn't be changed." This was beginning to sound like fun. I told him I would check a bit and get back to him.
When I came to Sewanee as a very young, over-cerebral, new professor I never dreamed that I would lead white-water canoe trips with students, hike in the snow to Mt. Leconte, spend days and nights alongside students fighting fires, nor hold them in my arms while they cried when their friends died or because the accident we had just worked was too horrible for words. I never dreamed that one of my advisees would get married in my living room, or that I would teach engineering hydraulics on the side. Yet any professor or administrator here could narrate a similar catalog of experience. When our VC started out as a history professor at Harvard, he never dreamed he would be the mayor of a small Appalachian town having to worry about water and sewer fees. At Sewanee teachers don't just teach. I certainly never expected to drive fire trucks , nor that I would attend highway patrol seminars on VIP security. It was the highway patrol and security side of things that was relevant now.
I got on the radio to the Sewanee Police, to my friend and co-worker, Ernie Butner: "500 to 421. What's your 20=where are you?" "On Georgia Avenue." "Hold it right there, I'm coming out." I met Ernie and explained our situation. He said, "I just saw one of the county deputies come through; I'll bet he is going to meet the bus." We went to find him--waiting by the roadside toward Monteagle. When we pulled up, the deputy recognized me and said, "That was some mighty fine shooting the other day Mr. Smith. [I had done well just the Friday before on the range at the Police Academy.]" He continued, "What can I do for you boys?" We said, "We want to hijack the Good Morning America bus." He said, without blinking or raising an eyebrow, "That'll be fine." It helps to have good relations with the local constabulary. We worked out the plan: he would escort the bus, we would hide just over the brow of the hill beyond the gate, when he passed us we would slip in ahead of the bus with our blue lights, and when we got to university avenue, we would turn. If the bus turned we knew we had them.
A hour went by, then two, then three. The bus was missing. I sent out scouts with mobile radios and phones. I activated the multi-county police radio net. No bus. I got Prof. Keith-Lucas of the psychology department to stand by in his plane. We checked the maps and began isolating routes. No bus. I started to launch the plane. Finally an anonymous Highway Patrol voice came over the radio and said, "Check the ramp at Monteagle." That was all I needed. [Later we found out that they had stopped for lunch and to visit the Moon Pie factory outside of Chattanooga.] No matter. We had them. Over the hill they came [two buses, not one], led by their staff car. On go our blue lights. Scratch out to 60 mph and cut in front of the lead bus. When we came to University Avenue our maneuver was so smooth that the buses disappeared from the highway before the staff car ever thought to look back. We had them on University Avenue headed for the Quad at 40 miles an hour. How to stop them? I radioed ahead to Mr. Watson: "I don't think we can stop them--unless of course there happens to be some type of obstruction in the road." He called back, "I think we can handle that."
Ah, the diversity of Sewanee education. The many uses of the academic gown. The things our students learn to do, the close work with the administration. The intimate student-faculty relations. While I had been bus scouting and planning our diversion, Mr. Watson and our Provost Fred Croom had organized about 250 students, most of them in gowns, on the quad. Some faculty and staff people also joined the crowd. Dr. Croom had even sprung for hundreds of Hardee-burgers when our little escapade ran all the way through lunch. Watson and Croom were ready. As soon as they saw the buses coming, they sent the 250 students into the street waving and cheering. The buses slowed to a stop and were immediately surrounded. The first thing we saw when the door opened was the ABC cameraman, tape rolling. We had sucessfully hijacked the GMA bus. They stayed for 45 minutes, interviewing students, filming, staging our greeting for opening the show the next morning. I stood by the ABC staff car, talking to the tour coordinator. She was amazed at us. "You all are pretty slick," she said. In the meantime Watson and I had given our credit cards to students and told them: "Go to the Supply Store. Buy everything in sight with Sewanee on it." We loaded them down--even with a gown which was displayed on national TV a few days later. We had a blast.
About twenty-five years ago a precocious Harvard undergraduate, Andy Tobias wrote a book entitled, Honor Grades on 15 Hours a Week. Subtitle: "How to Keep Studies from Interfering with your College Education." Harvard man; Sewanee soul. [Reminds me a bit of our bumper sticker a few years ago: "If God had been a Sewanee student, he would have blown it off for six days and pulled an all-nighter."] In that delightful little book, besides managing to poke a bit of deserved fun at the seriousness of the academy, is found some genuine wisdom about collegiate education. Tobias wrote:
Studying is just one part of learning, and learning is just one part of the college experience. In addition to learning there is personal development and there is fun. It would be a shame to spend four years in college without developing an interest in certain academic subjects and without learning a lot from courses. It would be equally unfortunate to leave college without having learned something about dealing with people and about dealing with oneself, without having formulated personal standards and goals. It would be a tragedy not to have thoroughly enjoyed those four years, four years when physically and mentally one is at his peak, most alive.
I can't think of much better advice no matter where you go to school, nor can I think of a more apt description of what actually happens at Sewanee. Of all the places I know, Sewanee has managed never to let the excellence of its education be defined--or delimited--by its classrooms. Now note carefully that I am not denigrating what we do in class. We are proud of what we do--and we do it well. Getting six religion majors into med school from Sewanee ought to leave no doubt about what we do in the classroom. But when you learn that we have gotten students into med school from everyone of our academic majors--including music, fine arts, and classics--you know that not only are the classrooms excellent, there is more going on here than grinding scholarship. When you begin to make the count of the other successes of our graduates, particularly the surprising number that have had very successful careers at high levels in the U.S. government, you realize that Sewanee is doing a lot more than conducting successful classes.
It is that "something more"--what we do outside of and beyond our classes--that concerns me here. It was represented for me in the wonderful planning, comraderie, and fun of the bus hijacking. It is represented in other ways. It is represented in the faculty member who taught Shakespear courses as intensive as any we have ever had here, then spent his afternoons teaching those same students the delights of rose gardening by the lake. It is represented in the Chemistry professors who have had as long a string of Ph.D graduates among their majors [percentage wise] as any other chemistry department in the country--yet have found time to take students on trips to Atlanta to fill out their education in opera or who took the time to hold office hours through the night so that they could help freshmen through the intro course.
It is also represented in those students who do all the things students have to do, but still find time to serve as firemen, EMTs, or build Habitat For Humanity houses, or teach signing or remedial reading in the county schools. For me it is delightfully represented in all those Sewanee students who have managed to not only find jobs, but make successful careers in fields un-related to their majors. One I remember in particular because she was a religion major: very bright, so I steered her to graduate work at Duke. She had also done a lot of work here in English, so she started working on a second graduate degree at Chapel Hill. She finally discovered that Ph.D. work was not what she wanted, and soon she needed a job. Here was how she searched for her job: she went to the Research Triangle between Duke, Raleigh, and Chapel Hill and drove around until she found a pretty building that looked like the kind of place she could imagine herself working. She parked her car, went in and walked up and down the halls until she found what she later described as an interesting office. A woman greeted her at the door and asked if she could help her. Carol said, "Yes, I am looking for a job and this looks like a neat place to work." The woman then asked, "Where did you go to school?" Carol replied, "Sewanee." The woman said to her, "I used to go up there for party weekends. They have a really good program in English. Can you write?" The last I heard Carol had finished four or five books with them and was working on another: she translates computerese into English and then produces the prose manuals that accompany software programs: a religion major. Another religion major works the other way: she got a degree in electrical engineering and is now working writing the programs that allow ground stations to communicate with sattelites for the Air Force.
It isn't just the diversity of careers that is important here though this diversity means Sewanee students leave here with a very viable portfolio of skills--skills which they sometimes don't recognize until years later. What is most important is the vision of themselves and of life and learning that they take with them. Perhaps our most impressive students are the ones that leave and that we never hear from again: who are enabled by their Sewanee education to live out lives of serene contentment, supporting their families and communities in undistinguished but profound ways. For ultimately our education is not about majors, not about careers, not about jobs, not about all the things we print in the alumni record or report to newspapers when we are justly proud of you. Our education is quietly about people: about the formation of character and personality and spirit that enables you to see the whole where others see the part, that lets you see the future when others can only see the present, that allows you trust when others would fear, that allows you to care when others would scorn, that enables you to believe when others would despair. We know that nothing in notebooks, nothing in class, nothing in any one nor all of our library volumes counts for anything until you own it for yourself and begin to live it: not by precept or rule, not by judgement or declamation--but live it by being able to utterly forget it and then still do the right and just and intelligent thing. That is why you must spend a lot of time lying about under trees and walking in the fog when you come here. You must learn the names of the dogs--and of the children and the custodians, and the workmen. That is why you must dwell in a high idleness so that you are not overwhelmed into taking all this book stuff too seriously. Tobias said that it would be a shame not to have learned a lot while at college. But it would also be a shame not to have learned about yourself and about people.
Let me leave you with these words of an old teacher who anticipated Tobias' wisdom in another century. Eaton master William Cory wrote:
At school you are not engaged so much in acquiring knowledge as in making mental efforts under criticism...A certain amount of knowledge you can indeed with average faculties acquire so as to retain; nor need you regret the hours you spend on much that is forgotten, for the shadow of lost knowledge at least protects you from many illusions. But you go to a great school not so much for knowledge as for arts and habits; for the habit of attention, for the art of expression, for the art of assuming at a moment's notice, a new intellectual position, for the art of entering quickly into another person's thoughts, for the habit of submitting to censure and refutation, for the art of indicating assent or dissent in graduated terms, for the habit of regarding minute points of accuracy, for the art of working out what is possible in a give time; for taste, discrimination, for mental courage and mental soberness. And above all you go to a great school for self-knowledge.
If you come here, I can't promise you that you will get to hijack a bus, but Sewanee is a great school for self-knowledge. Some you will acquire in classes and labs; some on athletic fields and in social clubs; some you will acquire as you sit at dusk under the cross on the bluff; and some self knowledge you will acquire in the shadows of the quad. There are many shadows here--and the shadow of lost knowledge is the longest of all.