University of Virginia Library

Addicts Considered

(13) Nor will students opt for Birdwood if they have
already been conditioned to demand a cheeseburger at the
White Spot, a flick twice a week at the University Theatre, and
a read in a skin mag at Mincer's, all at the end of a ten or
twenty-minute walk from their dorm. Nor will students opt
for Birdwood if they see that most of the courses they want or
need, most of the professors they admire and desire, are
teaching only on the Grounds.

(14) The problems seem to be mounting up: If you can't
have library, labs, Charlottesville amenities, and the courses
you want, what is going to induce you to go out to Birdwood?
The Charlottesville housing crisis maybe? But that's a poor
way to populate a beautiful piece of land—by using rejects
from area landlords and unluckies who fail the Housing Office
lottery. So let's forget that. Nothing is going to induce a
student to want to go out to Birdwood unless this is
something-strikingly-different in the way of an education and
a setting will be seductive enough to counteract the
disadvantages cited above and thereby entice out to Birdwood
the two or three thousand undergraduates that we are likely to
deem the desirable figure. Mere difference won't do.

(15) What kinds of difference, then? Something radical,
outlandish, foolhardy, simple-minded? Something impossible
to fund or maintain? Something freewheeling to the point of
abolishing requirements and even a degree? Or (to go to the
other extreme) does this mean really only superficial or
"cosmetic" differences—a bit of tinkering here and there with
the curriculum, perhaps the addition of a few niceties to make
the living situation more comfortable?