The Last Peaceful Place

In 1968 The New Yorker dubbed Cornell College “the last peaceful place,” the only college campus the Vietnam protests hadn’t touched. It takes a while for events to penetrate the Hilltop. It's isolated here, peaceful. A retreat apart from the world. In Beyond the University: Why Liberal Education Matters, Michael Roth explains that college was originally meant to be harder than life in the outside world as a way to make the everyday challenges seem less. He notes a shift recently where students now attend schools to be sheltered from the outside world for four years. Liberal Arts schools cater to this, often tucked away on hill tops or in rural areas. They send students into the world but they safely harbor them first.

I resisted leaving the world and coming here. How could I prepare for real life when I wasn’t in it? When I moved to Kalamazoo from Marquette Michigan a friend warned, “time moves faster here, but it’s okay, like, you’re actually getting things done in real time.” The twenty-four hour neon glow of the city replaced the endless Sunday afternoon of my small town. How novel a run across the street for milk at 2am seemed. How irritating a long wait for coffee in the morning. Time is money. We’ve got places to be and appointments to keep. When I moved from Kalamazoo to Mt. Vernon time changed again in three and a half week regimens of hyperactivity followed by four days of complete calm. I often forget what day it is, favoring a numbering system “Monday of first week” in place of the date. It’s quiet here, so quiet I lose track of time in the rest of the world. It give new meaning to the Catholic concept of Ordinary Time, the days devoted to regular ritual.

I forgot my natural city rhythms and adjusted to the Block. It’s a breaking process.  I am amazed at the things I can accomplish in 18 days, it is enough time to write a 20 page paper (or as we told, think of them as 20 one-page papers) put in 15-41 hours of work, read a 1000 pages, and learn a new subject. Time moves differently here. Our days are regimented by the bells at King Chapel and the shifting of the sun across the snow. It’s archaic, we share common life and common rule. We go to class together, eat together, study together, and meet for clubs at prescribed times every day. I am no longer compartmentalized as a Tuesday/Thursday commuter student. More than just here I'm mentally present in this quiet place to reflect and meet the self.

We’re losing our quiet places.

I’m deeply saddened to hear about the closing of Sweet Briar and Tennessee Temple University. What place will the liberal arts have in a world where degrees are offered cheaper and faster at for-profits? Where work comes first and school is delegated to two days a week. School becomes about results, about finishing the cheapest, fastest way. We are hyper-competitive for grades, scholarships, and leadership positions that look good on resume. In a culture of competition that goes well beyond the bounds of healthy what value does communal life have?

My final college decision wasn’t based on pedagogy about common life or quiet places, in the end practicality won out, Cornell offered me a tuition rate that could be completely covered by my Pell grant and federal student loans. I would not have to take out private loans and would still receive an overage payment for living costs. They also offered a generous work-study award. This is the best college I got into that I could afford.

It can be argued affordability is part of community. I’m here because of alumni who give to our endowment. I worry though, in a hyper competitive individualistic society how many generations of students will continue to give back to the school? How many will be able to afford to when they are still paying off undergraduate loans a decade from now?

Even with abundant aid the liberal arts are a tough sell. What student, who wants to remain competitive for graduate programs, won’t flinch in the face of papers marked with B’s and C’s when the for-profits offer an easy A? A good education does not guarantee success. Is a liberal education an expensive hobby?  a four year retreat before entering the 24/7 service economy? It’s lovely to loafe on the ped mall and contemplate ourselves as Walt Whitman instructed but $37k is a lot to pay for a good loafe. There's a price for cultivating a rich inner life.   

A few months ago I spoke to my ten-year-old sister on the phone.

“Is college hard?” she asked.

“Yes.” I said.

“I don’t know if I want to go. It’s too hard and too expensive and you can get a good job without it.”

My heart broke audibly over the phone.

“It’s not ‘too hard’, you build up to it. You still have a lot of school left by the time you get to college, you’ll be ready for it.” I said.

I explained some jobs a woman needs a degree for even a two-year degree. I told her we’d work out the cost when the time came and reminded her I won scholarships.

Children don’t come up with these ideas entirely on their own. I’m deeply concerned someone is telling my sister she isn’t college material or that college is priced out for her.  I’m worried she is internalizing the message college isn’t worth it. My sisters are the reason I’m working my way through college. I want them to see what they can accomplish even when every door seems shut, when every path seems hopeless. I want them to go to college to get an education not a degree, to learn to love the solitude scholarship provides, and apply theories that help them connections in the world they never noticed before. I want them to meet their true selves in a quiet place.

But, I worry that when they get here there won’t be any quiet places left, at least not any they can afford. I worry liberal arts education is becoming lost to our nation’s history, an interesting footnote about the world before all schools because for-profit.