University of Virginia Library

Colloquium

Resisting The Disease Of The Spirit

By DANTE GERMINO

—Ed.)

One of the sad features of
American higher education is
the extent of standardization
that prevails in its ranks. The
federal system is supposedly
designed to encourage
experimentation and diversity,
and yet in one state university
after another we encounter a
depressing sameness. The
University of Virginia has
stood out as at least one state
university which is different,
which has displayed its own
Geist and individuality. It is in
part because of its special
character that many of us,
students and faculty, have been
attracted to come to come
here.

How is growth likely to
affect the quality of life at the
University? At the rate it has
occurred in recent years,
without corresponding
improvements in facilities, and
at the rate projected by earlier
reports of the Committee on
the Future, in my judgment it
can only impair it. Beyond that
eventuality, however, there will
be the further tragedy of a
missed opportunity to improve
that very quality of life and to
make of our University a place,
in the words of Hegel, "truly
worthy of the spirit of man to
inhabit."

It makes a huge difference
what prior assumptions and
attitudes are brought to bear
upon the growth problem. Do
we view expansion as a
necessary evil, to be contained
as far as possible, or do we leap
upon the bandwagon of the
escalator psychology wherein
excellence is linked to size and
goodness to "greatness."

Are we to be concerned
primarily with the members of
the academic community as
persons or are we to give way
to the impersonal logic of
numbers to be processed and
space requirements to be
"filled"? Will we have
imaginativeness and courage to
propose that an additional
state university of comparable
quality be founded in some
other area of Virginia to
accommodate on a human basis
the anticipated increase in
applicants for under-graduate
and graduate education
centered on liberal learning,
even if this development would
mean the emergence of another
competitor for funds from the
state legislature?

I do not intend by anything
which is said here to cast
aspersions upon the good will
of those who have devised
and/or have supported the
policy of expansion. Nor do I
imply that they are themselves
out of sympathy with
humanistic values. The
problem is of a different order
and has nothing to do with
personalities.

For in our society (and not
only in our society) today,
there prevails a kind of
technocratic ideology which
permeates via cultural osmosis
virtually all of the pores of the
body politic. It requires
exceptional powers of
resistance to withstand this
virus. I had thought that at this
University we had a chance to
create a pocket of resistance to
this disease of the spirit. If
only we diagnose it accurately
in time, it is possible that we
may yet do so.

I am above all concerned
about the College. More
resources need to be
concentrated upon the College
to improve the quality of
education for our
undergraduates. Tutorial and
seminar programs urgently
need to be made available for
all students. Residential college
conditions need to be created.
An under-graduate library with
multiple auxiliary facilities
supporting our total
educational life (and not only
housing books) needs to be
constructed.

Conditions for increased
meaningful contact between
students and faculty vis a vis
must be imaginatively devised.
This means increasing the
number of faculty vis a vis the
student population, and
increased efforts at recruiting
faculty who are particularly
open to students and receptive
to experimenting with
alternative ways of learning
and evaluation of performance.

All of this will take time and
resources; they will not be
forthcoming adequately if the
energies of the university
administration are
concentrated on growth and on
improving the prestige ratings
of our graduate departments.

It is often said that we are a
state university and cannot
afford to be "elitist." We are,
however, not only a state
university? We are a State
University with a difference!
i.e., we are Thomas Jefferson's
state university. Our university
has placed particular emphasis
throughout its history upon
education as the development
of the whole person rather
than as the "training" of
individuals in special
techniques and skills, however
important they may be in their
own right as auxiliary results or
by-products of education.

The need for citizens with a
broadly based humanistic
perspective has never been
more urgent than it is today.
Will our university contribute
what it could to the
enhancement of this
perspective if we go the way of

most academic flesh? Could
not our special mission be
today to resist prevailing
technocratic attitudes in the
name of enduring humanistic
values?

Such a position will be
attacked as reactionary and
"elitist" (bad word) by some.
My position on the question of
alleged "elitism," and that of
most students and faculty I
know who share it, is that we
at the new Virginia have a
commitment to provide the
same qualitative opportunities
for full development of the
person to greatly increased
percentages of black and other
underrepresented students,
including poor white students.

It is my contention that, in
their public statements, the
defenders of the policy of
expansion have not seriously
addressed themselves to the
philosophical issues involved in
the entire controversy. Instead,
there has been a depressing
tendency to dismiss objections
to expansion plans as
automatically uninformed and
misguided.

There is a tendency to take
shelter behind a barrage of
statistics, committee reports,
best-laid plans, assumptions of