University of Virginia Library

Realism Is Not The Same
As Fatalism

(8) What I am concerned about is that we examine these
premises and the proposed solutions they lead to, reserving
any binding and constricting recommendations until we are
sure we have brought some imagination to bear and have not
fallen into the habit of saying "no" to possible alternatives
simply because it is a little harder to go to the library, to
consultants, to our own ingenuity, to see if there is a "yes"
lurking anywhere. Underneath my Midwestern cynicism
regarding authorities and decision-makers, there beats the
sanguine heart of Norman Vincent Peale: I believe that
obstacles—budgetary, governmental, environmental,
prejudicial, what have you—should be regarded as challenges to
the imagination, not as occasions for adopting the easy
deterministic stance of "Well, it might be nice, but...." Or, "I
can tell you right now before going any further that it won't
work."

(9) Let me try to indicate what I mean by beginning with
the matter of isolation at Birdwood. I will not be proposing
anything more than a tentative chain of ideas to be considered
and debated; if my questions seem merely rhetorical and my
formulations somewhat dogmatic, I will make the provisional
defense that I have thought about these things being proposed
and continue to think and learn. I learned some things while
planning and reading in my first-year seminar last fall on "The
Idea of a University," and I learned some things in August of
1970 by participating for a week in sessions on "New
Environments for Learning" at the meeting of the Society for
Religion in Higher Education. I learned some things while
attending a two-day workshop of the Southern Regional
Education Laboratory last October in Durham. Like many of
my colleagues, I read and clip newspapers and magazines and
pick the brains of friends who teach elsewhere. None of us is
as ignorant as we sometime feel we must be, or as our students
are sometimes convinced that we are.

(10) That immodest assertion aside, let us begin
investigating this problem of isolation by examining our
present situation to see what it suggests as a line of thought.
Growth figures for the University presently suggest 18,000
total students, with 9,000 in the College, for 1980. Until we
have a report in February from the new Future of the
University committee, let's work from here. We are evidently
going to house and educate a portion of these 9,000 students
at Birdwood, and if we are going to do this, some procedure
must be found for putting a portion of them there and a
portion of them here on the Grounds. Why would it not be the
maximum of logic and the minimum of administrative frazzle
to design some scheme whereby self-selection will for the most
part sort out students who wish to go one place or the other?