University of Virginia Library

The Theme of "Inexhaustibility"
Introduced

(36) Let us begin with the desirable principle of
inexhaustibility. This is a quality presently missing on the
main Grounds of the University and therefore is one of the
differences that can make Birdwood attractive and enticing.
An explanation of this paradox first—how can Birdwood,
without a library and labs to speak of and with only two or
three thousand students, be "inexhaustible" in comparison to
the main Grounds? Very simply the difference is this: With a
million volumes at Alderman and a thousand brilliant
professors on the Grounds, the present University is of course
inexhaustible, but in potential only. In reality, unfortunately,
the library is like an iceberg and the typical faculty member
often seems like Coolidge. What the average undergraduate gets
out of this infinity of resources is pathetically small, and what
he learns about his fellow students (each in his small isolated
room or apartment) is lamentably little.

(37) This situation will continue to prevail as long as the
campus is composed of single-purpose cells (classrooms
sleeping rooms, dining rooms, long thin corridors), as long as
students tend to be segregated in classes and dorms by year of
entrance to the University, as long as faculty are deliberately
encouraged to derive their main satisfaction not from student
contact but from "national visibility" (the esteem of
colleagues at Berkeley, Yale, and Chicago), as long as existing
cells are left to grow as dreary as Dante's Inferno (dank dorms,
abysmal Alderman, characterless Cabell), and as long as a host
of other (some rather subtle) factors prevail which fragment
and enervate the University and make the potential
inexhaustibility of persons and knowledge a quite meaningless
concept.

(38) What can Birdwood do about this? Again, let us review
the hypothesis stated earlier: namely, that some students
(perhaps many) do not care about inexhaustibility—being
happy (or at least content) with the present system of fixed
classes in fixed rooms with fixed seats and fixed times with
minimum contact with professors and with minimum curiosity
about the library. Fine—for them we preserve the Grounds
pretty much in the existing state, so that they may go about
their business.