Gay rights agitators have taken to wearing shirts with dubious identity claims. DukeEngage, the project destined to do something incredibly noble, has emerged amid proclamations of moral supremacy. A sign calls for the freeing of Burma without indicating how this would be accomplished. Myriad smaller crusades propagate largely unchallenged, each on the frontier of political, moral or social activity.
The student finds in his grasp a plethora of opportunities; taking advantage of them yields a plethora of other opportunities. The sum of these opportunities and subsequent advantages taken yields a suitable life experience for the young person trying to find the right path. Such, I believe, is the view of the contemporary college campus-a veritable pinwheel of exciting chances to explore the world, and by implication, oneself-which, unlike the world, is the real locus of attention.
The student is told, with great gravity, to pursue his own dreams and ambitions and to make a difference according to his own preferences; from then, the student embarks upon anything that meets his fancy and experiments with his passing desires. It is clear that the nature of these exertions is oriented along the lines of what is "present" and "relevant." Eschewed, then, are the spires and ramparts of ancient knowledge. Instead, the ambitious student uses the trope of global community to make a specious difference in the name of individual fulfillment.
The Campus Culture Initiative Steering Committee Report pontificates, "[Duke] University as a community has the opportunity and responsibility to challenge the purported norm, to define what is, and what is not, normative for Duke and reset the default more positively." Because the University community does not actually exist, this sentence is nothing more than license for students to "reset the default" according to their own whims. Assiduously incited to "question" power structures or "affirm" difference, the student is thereby encouraged to tread his own path-in the name of community, no less.
The paradox of individual struggle at the behest of ivory tower directives hangs like a wispy fog-noticed only upon reflection.
Witness the curriculum. Hundreds of courses are available for perusal and selection. The underlying impetus (epitomized by the administration-induced distribution requirement system) is to expand the student's options, to cater to his needs, to pander to his interests. Believing that he is truly exploring the world, the current student is actually gratifying his own desires. The present curriculum is not designed to present the student with the full panoply of deep and penetrating thoughts-merely to allow the student to choose which thoughts he is challenged by (and, as a result, not be challenged).
Through it all, the modern adolescent is troubled by the lack of "something more." A palpable unease is prone to momentarily overtaking the youth, whereupon he realizes that a deep philosophical underpinning to his existence is altogether missing. The student, unfettered as he is from the profound realms of human thought, is suddenly overtaken by an urge to validate his existence. He utters, not without a bit of derring-do, "just live."
Sayings like "just live" are fit for those who think an effusive phrase both profoundly sums up philosophical angst and reflects an acceptable basis for future action. Yet "just live" is an admission of defeat-an acknowledgment that providing a serious and thoughtful account of one's life is not worth the effort. In other terms, the phrase is an utterance for adolescents.
An account of one's life would involve writing out one's beliefs, reflecting on past behavior and attempting to ask whether one is living the right and good life. It would necessitate looking at oneself from the outside and questioning one's very existence, one's most fundamental assumptions and ambitions. It involves discarding "just live" for something more meaningful, something beyond the confines of "relevant" experience for something that rigorously asks, for instance, whether the aforementioned crusades are good and right or not.
Who can deny that it is the role of a university to give students of the liberal arts an opportunity to begin to give such an account and thus grow into adults? There are many who do deny it in practice, if not in words, and one is not surprised to find them here at Duke. Indeed, the administration's goals and the inability of the student to come to grips with his own existence through serious study are linked.
Wheeler Frost is a Trinity sophomore. His column runs every other Monday.
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