 | The Cavalier daily Wednesday, December 15, 1971 |  |
Thinking
About
Birdwood
completeness or even at attaining an ALA "core" collection. It
might therefore be required of each student spending a year at
Birdwood that he bring with him in the fall one book (value
$10) which he will contribute to a permanent collection at
Birdwood, having ascertained from one of the Birdwood
professors what titles will be needed for a given class. A body
of students might well form an ad hoc committee for ordering
these books the spring prior to enrolling at Birdwood, and
thereby take advantage of library supply companies and their
substantial book discounts. Participation on such a committee
would itself be a learning process—a coming into contact with
the best and most necessary titles in a number of different
fields.
Community Communication
(68)There will be a need for quick and efficient
communication among members of the Birdwood community,
since if genuine inquiry begins to be carried on, the various
classes, task forces, research groups (or whatever other
designation a course may use for itself) should be eager to
invite other members of Birdwood to sit in on and/or
participate in various reports, seminars, lectures, and activities
of the class. Let the media building therefore have some rooms
open 24 hours a day with Ditto machines, Mimeographs, and
unlimited supplies of paper, Magic Markers, and thumbtacks,
so that notices for any and all activities no matter how
spontaneous, can be instantly produced and tacked to the
kiosks in the plaza.
(69)There will be a need for the usual types of counseling Photo By Lovelace Cook
and information that all undergraduates are entitled to,
regarding academic programs, careers, choice of major, nature
of certain extracurricular activities, and so forth. Let this need
be viewed, like other of the "problems" at Birdwood, as an
opportunity to enhance the spirit of community and to
facilitate the growth of personal relationships. Regard every
member of the Birdwood community as potentially an expert
other people. (I have an equestrian sister who once memorized
the winners of the Kentucky Derby, but this is not exactly the
kind of knowledge I have in mind.) Devise a way of making
known a person's particular knowledge—a system of
brightly-colored signs, shapes, and symbols (no words) for
placing on individual doors to indicate the occupant's (1)
major field, (2) year in the University, (3) geographical origin,
(4) membership in certain organizations or activities, (5)
special capabilities or hobbies (guitar, chess, tie-dyeing,
film-making, etc.). A plaque the shape of a book might serve,
for example, as the sign indicating a major field, with some
sort of arbitrary color scheme to indicate the specific area of
specialization: green for environmental science, red for Asian
studies, white (tabula rosa) for behavioral science, and so forth.
Simple state-shaped signs would serve for geographical
origin—enabling a student to drift along the sidewalk scanning
doors for a person to consult about, say, the summer job
situation in Philadelphia or the driving time to Atlanta.
Who's Who At Birdwood
(70)There will be a need for speeding the development of
relationships lest the year pass quickly without the benefits of
community actually coming about. Let there be a gallery or
galleries in some of the buildings fronting the plaza in which
snapshots and brief self-written comments are displayed for
the year (both students and faculty—and probably the staff of
supporting workers should be included also). It might well be
an appropriate student-aid job to gather and assemble this
material, and it might also offer an enterprising free-lance
student photographer a chance to earn some money.
(71)There will be a need, despite all the best efforts to Photo By Lovelace Cook
create a self-contained community, for some occasional mass
transport to the Grounds. Tom Wolfe is not likely to lecture
once in Cabell and once at Birdwood; nor will Janos Starker
give duplicate recitals. No instant rematch is going to be
scheduled at Birdwood following our annual loss to Navy in
Scott Stadium. The sensible way of viewing this need is to
consider it in relation to a similar need for mass transport in
the whole city area of Charlottesville. The following scheme, or
a modification, suggests itself: get a few double-decker buses
(for novelty and interest) and make round trips to and from
the Grounds every ten minutes for the three hours preceding
and following a major event. Soon enough the clever student
with a scheduled bus trip, thus killing two birds with one tank
of petrol. Lease the buses to the city when not in use by the
University—especially for carting tourists out to Monticello.
(71a)For car-less students at Birdwood who need to get
someplace where the bus isn't, buy a dozen used VW
Microbuses for them to check out (small fee) in three-hour
stretches (to a flick-plus-beer and back). Every dollar additional
voted by 2500 students to their fees will buy an additional
Microbus, it should be noted. This small fleet will also come in
handy for those courses that need to take occasional trips into
Washington or Appalachia or wherever. A sizeable number of
students will own their own cars (just as they do now), and
thus we will not be providing transportation for all of our
students. There should be little parking problem at University
Hall, and this in fact is where most major events in this
expanding University will be taking place—even (shudder!) the
sold-out Tuesday Evening Concert Series and other programs
that we are accustomed to seeing in Cabell. Anything more
elaborate in the way of a transportation system than
major-occasion buses, Microfleet, and individual cars (such as a
high-speed monorail or a tram system) is going to war against
the notion of creative isolation and self-containment that has
been stressed as a virtue of Birdwood.
A Controlling Principle
Is Coherence
(72) The preceding catalog of needs does not pretend to be
exhaustive, but does attempt to show that the kinds of
solutions developed for "problem" situations should not be
ad hoc, rule-of-thumb, thoughtless, or necessarily traditional.
The solutions must be articulated with the governing
philosophy of the campus and must not war against the fragile
condition of community and genuine inquiry which will not
occur of its own accord but will stand a chance of springing up
if nurtured. A policy or a facility or a piece of equipment that
is merely "nice" or different" or "interesting" is not
automatically qualified for inclusion at Birdwood. It must first
of all "fit in."
(73)This does not mean, on the other hand, that we should
place rigid boundaries around our thinking. The early stage of
planning for Birdwood should involve a great deal of individual
and collective "brainstorming." We should run a great many
flags up the flagpole, and even if we see some that we don't
really respond to initially, we ought to look at them long
enough to make a rational decision, not a reflexive one. I
would here, for example, raise a few flags in conclusion as
matters that might well be considered but on which I myself
have given no extensive thinking:
Television, Trees,
And Other Things
(74)1. Would the sense of community be enhanced by
taking for granted the need for a closed-circuit TV system, a
receiver being located in each residence room? (Videotapes,
for example, are easy to make and fun to learn from; it might
be exciting, moreover, if at various time during the year all the
members of Birdwood agreed in advance to watch, say, an
installment of "Civilisation" and then spend the entire next
day, an all classes, using the program as a discussion focus.)
(75)2. Should we safeguard the old barns on the Birdwood Photo By Lovelace Cook
tract as possibly usable and interesting buildings to renovate
and incorporate into an educational plant? (Not the concrete
has Goddard.)
(76)3. Could we plan mostly gravel roads instead of asphalt
for the new campus, or would noise, dust, and heavy traffic
(deliveries, etc.) make this impractical? (This is one of those
"cosmetic" details that might on paper sound like phony
ruralism but which in practice might have more agreeable and
positive effects than one would expect.)
(77)4. Should some reforestation of Birdwood be started
soon (it is now largely pasture and field), so as to advance the
day when parts of the unused sections of the tract will be a
forest park in the middle of an urbanized central Albemarle
country? (The density of the adjacent Bellair and Edam
Forest residential areas is certainly minimal, to be sure, but at
the same time it does not seem likely that in this fast-growing
area much public recreation space is going to be set
aside, much less a forested tract.)
Some Intriguing Questions
(78)5. Should a certain small number of graduate students
be considered an integral part of the new campus? (Thus
constituting a third, "bridge," group between undergraduates
and faculty, and providing increased diversity, maturity, and
intellectual resourcefulness to our self-contained community.)
(79)6. Can we begin to plant in the minds of Albemarle
County school authorities the idea of locating an experimental
laboratory school on or adjacent to the Birdwood property?
(To give our undergraduates the chance to become better
learners by also being teachers, and to provide an alternative
learning situation for those Albemarle County families who
desire it for their children.)
(80)7. Should an attempt be made to incorporate the
maintenance, cleaning, and clerical people into the community
as part of the living/learning arrangement? (It would be
educational for the Scarsdale and Fairfax types among our
students to see a real live worker in his habitat off-hours, but
the reciprocal benefit may be absent.)
(80a)8. Should the University, in eventually making its final
plans for Birdwood, set aside for the most part the state
square-footage guidelines for building space of various kinds,
assuming that a truly imaginative plan for residential colleges
will attract private donors wishing to attach their names to
portions of the complex proposed? (Not being familiar with
the state limitations, I don't know if they are niggardly or
liberal, but as a taxpayer I would assume the former—in which
case the compromise buildings I have denounced might well be
our sad fate unless we devise a concept we believe very
strongly in and are then willing to noise it about wherever
private money is lurking.)
A Final Summary
(81)In reading over what I have written here over a period
of weeks, and in examining my thinking and its sources (in
readings, conversations, and observations that in some cases go
back literally years), I am struck by the feeling that the
foregoing presentation is an extremely conservative approach
to the Birdwood situation, both in architectural design and in
the educational philosophy that underlies the design.
A Confession of Conservation
(82)It begins where we are now, without trying to evade
realities, and it assumes a relatively slowly-changing academic
program on the Grounds. It is in no sense
"experimental"—there is nothing of the ambiance of a
share-the-work commune or the unstructured ex nihilo
philosophy that damned SUNY at Old Westbury ("Well, here
we are, all together, preselected for sparkling brilliance and
creativity; now what shall we study and how?") Nothing
remotely resembling an elitist selection process on the one
hand or "open admissions" on the other is visualized. Nor is
any "trendy" area of study proposed, or any quota system, or
the absence of traditional grades and faculty qualifications.
(The new Governors State University in Illinois has 35% black
or Latin-American staff, no grades, and no professorial
ranking.)
(83)The proposal is conservative, furthermore, in that it
accepts as a starting point the present University growth plans
toward a minimum of 18,000 total students—a figure which is
unlikely to be revised downward by the new Future of the
University Committee. It accepts as given the need for
discipline and restraint, assuming that a town of 3000 is a
manageable and humane size, even though one of the
University's planners has stated that the Birdwood tract can
accommodate 18,000 persons easily. As stated earlier, we do
not do everything that we can do; we make decisions about
what is appropriate to our ends. Finally, I have not here
presented a final design, a fully-researched proposal, or a
scheme so well-constructed and integrally-conceived that
removal of one clerestory window brings down the whole
Habitat.
(84)I am pleading implicitly and explicitly that we decide
what we want to achieve before we begin to talk about what
buildings are necessary. Absent from the proposal, for
example, is a classroom building, since classes are to be
scattered in rooms of various shapes and locations among the
student and faculty living quarters. Yet the first impulse we all
will have—in the absence of reflection on our goals—will be to
throw up some sort of classroom building! (Feeling that surely
this is a sine qua non.)
(85)Conservative as it is, it does seem to me that there is
much that is both sensible and appealing in the community
here envisioned. To me, such an arrangement would be an
enormously exciting and stimulating place in which to live and
teach and think. I would hope that there is some shared
sentiment among persons who have taken seriously the
question of what environment and what mix of people are likely
to contribute most effectively to learning, so that my personal
opinions do not appear foolish or unrealistic.
Photo By Lovelace Cook
Tests For Success
(86)The day on which we decompartmentalize our lives and
regard every year as a year of learning (and not merely the
years from age six to age twenty-two) is unfortunately
probably pretty far off here in America generally, despite
some influence in this direction that the January 1971 report
of the Carnegie Commission on Higher Education is likely to
have. One test of an experience such as the Birdwood
described would be to make every participant thereafter
dissatisfied with the blocks and hindrances and compartments
that tend to seal most people off from further learning when
only the first third of their life is past—their caps and gowns,
dismally black, becoming a funeral pall for the mind.
Birdwood students should be able to re-enter the Grounds and
the outer society as seeds for further learning communities
wherever they find themselves.
(87)Another test of a successful Birdwood would be the
arousal of a spirit of genuine and permanent dissatisfaction
among students on the Grounds itself—knowing full well of
the accomplishments taking place at Birdwood and standing in
puzzled amazement at the persistence of the status quo on the
Grounds. When we begin to see the classes and seminars and
eating discussions at Birdwood suddenly populated by a
mysteriously larger number of students and faculty than we
have enrolled, we shall infer that we must be doing something
right and that the influx is from the students we have left
behind (in more ways than one) on the Grounds.
A Road And A Bridge
(88)Those of us at Birdwood will have little reason to want
to leave, in short, but the students on the Grounds will be
forever racing out there so as not to miss the perennial
excitement of genuine learning and intellectual excitement.
And that, of course, is the real reason for the road and bridge.
Copyright 1971
Charles Vandersee
| The Cavalier daily Wednesday, December 15, 1971 | |