The Cavalier daily :: Wednesday, December 15, 1971 :: University of Virginia Library

(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.