Animal House revisited
And yet, despite that capacity to interconnect with each other, people seem to be more isolated into what I call silos. And part of it I think was an overreaction to the diversity that's gone on. There's a natural tendency for all of us to seek out like-minded, like-looking, like-thinking individuals and that's naturally going to go on with 18-, 19-, and 20-year-olds. Everyone speaks the language of tolerance and assimilation, but under the surface there's not as much of it as there probably should be or that everybody aspires to have.
Q: Some of your observations sound very similar to Tom Wolfe's in his recent novel, I Am Charlotte Simmons, which also deals with the impact of booze and sex and political correctness on campuses today. What did you think of his book?
A: There isn't anything in there that I disagree with. I met or heard about every one of the characters in Charlotte Simmons. But I think he missed some things and I think he got a little hung up on the coed dorms and the sex. It's there, but I don't think it quite dominates life to the extent that he suggests.
The second thing he missed is the whole student affairs overlay. There was not a single student affairs person in the whole book. When Charlotte went into her deep depression, no one even knows or cares; she disappears for about a month. That just doesn't happen. I mean, they'd be all over your case. If that happened to you and you just sort of disappeared into a deep funk, they'd find out and have meetings and spend hundreds of man-hours discussing your case in order to make sure you didn't commit suicide. And yet, none of that happens [in Wolfe's book]. She was just off on her own living in this guy's apartment .
Q: So you don't think there's as much sex on college campuses as Tom Wolfe does?
A: I don't think it's as libertine. He makes it seem like a Roman orgy, as if this is just going on in public all the time. It's much more furtive than that. Yeah, people get drunk at these big parties, but then they kind of slip off somewhere. But it's happening behind closed doors or under the sheets or on a futon somewhere. It's not glamorous.
Q: You also seem concerned by the lack of free time in the schedules of today's college students.
A: Yes, I do worry about that. The motto at Hamilton was "Know thyself." And I don't think in the current college environment that they have time to know themselves. That's a real loss. It goes back to the whole notion of the unexamined life being not worth living. You've got to do that, you've got to examine your own life and figure out who you are and where you're going, and if you don't allow yourself time to do that, you've missed a big opportunity, especially at those critical ages of 18-22.
Q: In spite of some of your worries about today's college kids, you still seem to think they're doing OK, by and large.
A: One thing I wanted to avoid doing was suggesting that in all the mayhem of drinking and smoking marijuana and date rape and stuff that this is a doomed generation. It's not. It does work out most of the time. The girl I don't identify in the book who knocked back 22 shots of vodka and got taken off to the hospital her freshman year, she's now going off to get her Ph.D. in a pretty complicated science. And they're all capable of doing that, as long as they can survive. I came out of this with enormous faith in the students themselves.
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