A Novel Approach to Life

[ PART ONE ]

Recruiting Students to Trinity University

From 1977 until I was required to retire from my administrative position on June 1, 2000—because I had reached the age of sixty-five the preceding January—I made many speeches on behalf of the university as part of the recruitment efforts of the Admissions Office staff. Sometimes I traveled with admission colleagues to nearby cities, but more often I simply showed up at events hosted on campus for high school counselors or for high school students—often accompanied by parent(s)—and delivered my thoughts on student life and on this university’s philosophy regarding students outside the classroom.

Over the years of preparing and delivering these remarks, I developed what I considered to be a fine approach to covering what student life at Trinity was and was not. Thus, I include speeches to high school counselors as well as to prospective students and their parents, dating from 1977 to 2000. There are a few repetitions, even in phrasing, but I think you’ll see the ways my approach altered and became more audacious as I aged in this business.

High School Counselors

MARCH 24, 1977

It’s my special pleasure to be asked to participate in the program this morning and to be one of the first persons to welcome you to Trinity University. I’ve been asked to tell you a few things about Student Affairs at Trinity, as well as introduce some of my colleagues, tackle and drag from the front of the room anyone who attempts to speak too long, and get you out of here in time to catch your ride for lunch.

Let me tell you very briefly some things about Student Affairs at Trinity. Please spare me any jokes about how many affairs with students you have had!

The first thing you should know is that in loco parentis (that is, university administrators in lieu of parents) is dead on this campus. We treat our students as adults and expect them to behave maturely. We do not have any restrictive rules and regulations for the students in the residence halls or out of them. We do not show any special favors to students of one sex over the other; all our regulations apply equally to male and female students, and all our facilities are of equal niceness for them.

We have a relatively active Student Senate through which the students express their grievances and plan programs of an extracurricular nature. Students have a very involved program of fine films, a limited program of lectures—because lectures have been the thing on our campus for a while—and an excruciatingly involved program of all the beer you can drink and all the loud music you can endure parties. The student government is not extremely politically active, though it does revise its constitution every other year. The Student Activity Board has all kinds of opportunities for student involvement; one of the most important on this campus is known as TUVAC—the Trinity University Voluntary Action Center—through which students participate in all kinds of community services, such as working with the elderly, the underprivileged, and the emotionally disturbed.

We also have an active residence hall government, and there are, of course, small units within each of the halls to which the students relate and through which they work. In the residence hall programs, as I have said, we are not very restrictive. Neither are we, however, as liberal as many schools you will visit. We have a good deal of what we call residence hall relocation. This, I must admit to you, is just a euphemism that’s more palatable to most parents; the relocation really means coed housing. We have our students assigned by gender to buildings in close proximity to buildings housing students of the other gender, but in most cases students of different genders do not live within the same units; they live in units that adjoin one another.

We permit students to have what is known as visitation—this is not, I’m sorry to say, a visit of the angel of the Lord but the privilege of entertaining a friend of the opposite sex in the student’s room. We don’t permit visitation twenty-four hours a day, though sometimes it does, of course, go on. We permit visitation only until midnight during the week and until two in the morning on weekends. Beer and wine in student rooms have recently been permitted.

We protect our students by a Joint Statement of Students’ Rights and Freedoms by which the students are very carefully and elaborately protected from any arbitrary action on the part of any faculty member, administrator, or middle-aged dean of students who might crack up and run amok during the year. We try to be responsible in dealing with students and always grant them full due process.

The students at Trinity University are not anti-administration. I’m the first to be glad to say this to you. My office is filled with students all the time because the attitude of all of us on this campus toward students is one of open trust and candid expression.

Our students aren’t concerned just with visitation and beer busts; there is a great deal of academic concern even among our most ill-equipped students. In fact, some of the greatest academic concerns come from our most ill-equipped students—sometimes frenzy. To give you a specific reference point so that you might appreciate the academic excellence available on this campus, I want to be sure you know that we have in the last few years been awarded charters for both a chapter of Mortar Board and Phi Beta Kappa.

We have under the auspices of Student Affairs, the Trinity University Counseling and Personal Resources Center, which is an office staffed by professional psychologists available to counsel students and give them all kinds of standardized testing free of charge. We use professionally trained persons in both this center and the residence hall staff, but we are most proud of a large number of outstanding senior students who serve in our residence halls as counselors and advisers. We have found that peer counseling has a very effective purpose and function on this campus. With the students helping us, you can be guaranteed that our office does not railroad students, nor do we mother them very much.

Trinity is a campus with a very strong religious background, and we have magnificent worship services each Sunday morning in the Marguerite B. Parker Chapel, but Trinity is not a denominational campus—the chapel program is ecumenical.

The main thing I want to say to you is that this is a campus where we get along very well with our students; this is very simple to achieve—we trust them and have done so for so many years that after a while they begin to trust us.

I always say whenever I have a chance to talk to a group like this that I have been at Trinity for a long time. I have to change this story a little bit each year. I first came to Trinity in 1958 as a head resident—I was only twelve years old at the time—and I have grown very accustomed to this place. You may take my sincere and unprejudiced—my very objective—word for it: this is a very special campus that inspires a deep sense of commitment. I think you’ll see this as you meet some of the faculty and administrative representatives here today.

Trinity Preview

JULY 1990

In the thirty minutes allotted to me I want to make eight points about Trinity University—things I believe you’d want to know as you begin the process of selecting the college that is best for you for your undergraduate experience.

Student Affairs at Trinity includes responsibility for the residence halls, the student activity program, food service, the counseling, health, career planning and placement services, the university bookstore and post offices—as well as that amorphous area, student citizenship and discipline. In other words, Student Affairs provides support services for the students in their lives outside the classroom.

Here are the eight things I believe you need to know.

Firstly, I would like to say that we are committed at Trinity University to the philosophy of student development as well as to the mission of the institution. The services provided by the staff exist in order to help establish an environment on this campus that will support and encourage students in their academic progress and assist them in their personal and social development.

At Trinity our commitment is not only to educating our students intellectually but also to educating them in the physical, emotional, and spiritual aspects of their being. A rare commitment in higher education these days, by the way.

Secondly, at Trinity we believe that what happens to our students outside the classroom is at least as important as what happens inside the classroom. Because we believe this, we employ a superb staff of professionals and paraprofessionals—paraprofessionals is a euphemism for students. We have incomparable facilities for student services. As you already know, our residence halls are, without question, the best maintained, the most spacious, and the most attractive in the country; our beautifully renovated university center is without equal, as is Mabee Hall, our central dining facility. (You just ate there. I heard a student say, Maybe meat, maybe jello.) My point is that we have exemplary facilities that are administered by well-trained professionals committed to the goals and mission of this institution.

Thirdly, at Trinity we acknowledge that some students (as well as some parents who have a significant role in planning their children’s futures) have apprehensions about attending a liberal arts and sciences institution, and we acknowledge that some of you may even have nightmares about whether liberal arts and sciences graduates ever get jobs, are ever accepted into graduate schools, or ever manage to find meaningful, lucrative careers through which they can achieve many of their life goals.

Because we recognize this anxiety, we offer excellent career planning services that are directed at, planned for, and available not only to graduating seniors but also to students throughout their undergraduate years. The process of career services—in cooperation with our colleagues in Academic Affairs—includes a core group of faculty advisers who work with students in groups of about ten during the students’ first and second years, who help the students design their curriculum and course selections, and who counsel the students through the vicissitudes of adjusting to the collegiate experience.

Through these counseling and career services we provide internships and help young people present themselves well in interviews, as well as write effective and impressive resumes. We bring to this campus recruiters from national corporations to interview students in the placement season toward the end of the students’ senior year. We sponsor a graduate school day and work with many of the distinguished alums of this institution in establishing contacts for our students as they seek employment upon graduation or jobs during the summer, spring, or semester breaks.

A large percentage of Trinity graduates do continue directly or indirectly into graduate schools and receive law, medical, or doctor of philosophy degrees. Frankly, fewer and fewer of our gifted students are satisfied with a mere baccalaureate degree and do go on to seek advanced degrees. And, Trinity graduates are sought by the most distinguished graduate programs, and our graduates flourish in these schools because of the unusually high quality of their undergraduate experience here.

For our graduates who choose to enter professions right away, research indicates that what employers are looking for in almost every instance is exactly what Trinity University attempts to help our students become. Good grades are not enough; what is critical are indications of dependability, creativity, assertiveness, and interpersonal skills. In other words, employers are looking for intelligent, personable, articulate, self-assured, trustworthy, dependable employees.

So, on this campus we offer a myriad of opportunities for involvement and cocurricular activities that will enable our students to develop their leadership skills—learning to set priorities and deal with the ambiguities of leadership—management skills, public speaking skills, and interpersonal communication skills—to communicate assertively, negotiate, and compromise.

Although we have approximately eighty student organizations, including ten local fraternities and sororities (no off-campus houses, by the way) to which 30 percent of our students belong, the greatest involvement for the past fifteen years or so has been in our superb intramural-outdoor recreation program and the student-developed and administered Trinity University Voluntary Action Center [TUVAC]. Through that student-run program of volunteer commitment, our students each year for the past several years have contributed over nine thousand hours of community service in San Antonio, ranging from tutoring middle-school children at risk to working with battered women, painting homes for the elderly, shopping for groceries for AIDS patients, and supervising activities at shelters for the homeless.

If you are not a person who cares about and who would like to use some of your considerable gifts in helping improve the situation of those less fortunate than yourself, you might well find that you would not fit in too well here. Our students are both privileged and caring people.

Narrow-mindedness, racism, sexism, prejudice, and intolerance in its many forms just are not acceptable in this particular community of scholars, which is committed to a liberating view of life. If you choose to come to Trinity, you should know that part of our goal is to help you become a more tolerant and more open-minded person about some things, and less tolerant, less open-minded about other things.

We try to abide here by the concepts the board of trustees reaffirmed in their Commitment to Excellence in intellectual development as well as moral and spiritual growth. Part of that document reads, The integration of body, mind, and spirit to achieve a wholeness in human life is fundamental to the well-being of the individual and to the very nature of the university itself. Recognizing these truths, the university strives to create an atmosphere in which basic civility and decency are expected, mutual respect and open communication are fostered, and sound religious faith and expression are encouraged.

That excellent document also contains this statement, which I admire and endorse: The willingness to give of one’s time, talents, and resources in service to the larger world is a primary end product of a quality education. You need to know this about Trinity.

The fourth point I want to make is about life outside the classroom. This is not a campus where anything goes, where any- and everything will be tolerated. We perceive our students to be young adults, and we expect them to assume responsibility for the consequences of their actions. We find the boys will be boys adage and rationalization antiquated and harmful. We do not have curfews for either our men or our women students. We permit first-year students to have cars. We permit students to have as guests in their rooms in the residence halls—for several hours each day—friends and acquaintances of the other sex.

We do not break into the student rooms while they are in class and rummage through their possessions, much as I’m sometimes tempted to do so. But we have a few well-publicized and—of course in my view—reasonable rules, regulations, and standards of behavior, and we have a carefully designed judicial system that encourages responsible citizenship and compliance with these regulations through peer review.

If your view of college life is an animal house or a party school where consideration of the rights of others and compliance with university policy and state and federal law should not be expected or enforced; if you are seeking a university where you will be free to do anything you want to do at any time you want to do it without being held responsible for the consequences of your actions; if you are heavily into a lifestyle in which you engage in demeaning, abusive behavior toward others based on their gender, race, religion, creed, national origin, sexual orientation, or physical condition, you really ought to think about going elsewhere. You wouldn’t like it here. You wouldn’t even get along with me.

Since this is a residential campus and because you will reside in a university-operated residence hall for three years in what we call a communal-living situation, it is important to us that as citizens in this community you possess certain skills and perspectives. You will need to respect the rights of others as well as to know that you have certain rights. We will try to help you become appropriately assertive and skilled in negotiation and compromise—if you aren’t already—and we will work with you to help you learn to manage your time and your interpersonal skills more effectively.

In order for us to be successful as a residential community, we must attract as our students responsible men and women who, as Herman Hesse phrased it in Siddhartha, realize that it is only important to love the world . . . to regard the world and ourselves and all beings with love, admiration, and respect.

My fifth revelation is that, unfortunately, Trinity University is not a perfect university community, nor is it a campus populated by perfect people who skip through their collegiate experience without difficulties or trauma. At Trinity we have students who are coping with just about every personal dilemma and challenge you can imagine, and some you cannot.

A recent report of the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching observed, Today’s undergraduates are, by every measure, more mature than the teenagers who enrolled a century or two ago. They bring sophistication and a determined independence to the campus. . . . Many students come to college with personal problems that can work against their full participation in college life, and administrators are now asking: is it possible for colleges to intervene constructively in the lives of students whose special needs and personal lifestyles are already well established?

At Trinity we face daily the challenge of how to assist our students as they deal with the dilemmas of dysfunctional families, illegal drug or alcohol addiction, eating disorders, confusion about their sexual orientation, tragic histories that have included their being victims of acquaintance rape or even incest.

As you visit campuses throughout the country and listen to speeches such as this, let me caution you that any chief administrative officer in student services today who claims that his or her university does not have a certain percentage of students who are struggling with such personal difficulties is either awfully naive and uninformed or is being less than straightforward with you.

Although I fully recognize the dangers of telling you this truth about Trinity campus life—because I realize you have many choices and can probably go to school anywhere you want—it is important to me and to all of us who are connected with this institution to tell you the truth about what we are, the challenges we deal with, and the commitment and mission of this particular institution.

The truth is, most of the young adults who live and study on this campus are pretty well-adjusted, serious men and women who experience during their undergraduate career only the typical growth and development challenges of late adolescence. But there are others on this and every campus who cope with serious challenges and who face stressful perplexities during their college years.

Trinity University is not a rehabilitation facility or a penal colony, but we are in the business of helping, not hurting, young people. So, if you are not yet perfect, rest assured that at Trinity we will care about you and do all we can to help you grow, develop, and continue to mature and plod onward toward perfectibility.

My sixth point is that certainly one of the unheralded concerns of every parent and every student selecting a college comes down to the mundane question, How bad is the institutional food going to be? That’s always one of my favorite questions here because the answer, happily, is not bad at all. Trinity has a contract with a national food service corporation, ARAServe. Our students purchase a light-eater, average-eater, or hearty-eater (oink, oink) plan—differently priced, you understand.

Food items are priced separately—you pay for whatever you choose. We offer lots of special diets and choices; the food service area is set up sort of like a mall’s picnic court, with a vegetarian station, a grill, gourmet burgers, food to go, pizza, soup bowl, and the mainstay—such as mother’s probably cooking for the family tonight, and much to my chagrin, it’s usually something like meat loaf or macaroni and cheese.

Believe it or not, at Trinity there are few complaints about or criticisms of the food service. In fact, sometimes I wish there were more complaints about the food so that maybe then the students wouldn’t fuss quite so much about some of my judicious decisions.

I’m not sure I should make this next and seventh observation because I fear some of you will misunderstand it and see it as something appallingly negative about this place, but it’s an aspect of this campus that bothers me, and, if I’m trying to tell you the truth and not just give you the hard sell, I need to tell you. I think it’s on my mind right now because I’ve gotten so many letters and cards from recent graduates and several have mentioned it.

So, brace yourselves for this, you may not like it. You see, here at Trinity we care about one another, we treat others (even students) with civility and respect. We not only tolerate differences; we celebrate them. We try to listen to each other—to heed opposing perspectives and to respond graciously even to stupid, uninformed views. I said to a verbally abusive student last spring, Rarely again in your life will a person of my age and station even let you in her office, much less attempt to negotiate with you or comprehend your point of view.

So, you see, one of the things wrong with Trinity is that people seem nicer and kinder and more sensitive than many people in what my students call the real world. Well, as you’ve probably guessed, I believe that in the real world humankind ought to treat one another more decently, more considerately, more respectfully.

My point is that the quality of life is awfully good in this community of scholars, and my warning to you is: if you choose to pursue your degree here, you’ll devote lots of energy for the rest of your life to trying to create a similar environment wherever you work, wherever you live.

My eighth and final point doesn’t exactly belong on this list, but I like to say it, so I will: I have served this particular institution since I was twenty-four years old and now am an extremely youthful, would-be svelte fifty-eight, and I love this place, I love what I do, and I love the Trinity people with whom I do it.

There are days, of course, when I wish we attracted less bright, less assertive, less articulate, less self-assured students. But most of the time I rejoice in the quality and promise not only of my students but also of my colleagues on the faculty and staff.

It is a great joy of my existence that I live and work in this beautifully maintained, aesthetically satisfying environment filled with gardens, trees, and fountains. And, in addition to the richness of my daily association with remarkable students and peers in this community, I, who have the honor of being a professor of English as well as an evil administrator, have spent in the past decade private time with the likes of Joseph Heller, John Irving, Tillie Olsen, Andrew Young, Carlos Fuentes, Allen Bloom, Edward Albee, Toni Morrison, Alex Haley, Ted Koppel, Joyce Carol Oates, Susan Sontag, Denise Levertov, Saul Bellow, Margaret Atwood, and this fall, God willing and the creeks don’t rise, on November 18, with the remarkable John Updike, the night before someone named Margaret Thatcher speaks here.

Just imagine such enrichment. The real key to Trinity’s success and the real reason you should think seriously about trying to come to this institution is that our mission is to provide superior undergraduate educational opportunities in the liberal arts and sciences to talented, serious young adults, and we do this remarkably well.

Since you are a talented, serious young adult, I wish you success in your search for a college that is the right fit for you, and I thank you for considering this institution that I love so much as one of your options.

Trinity in Focus

SPRING 2000

This really is not a good time for you to nap, much as I suspect many of you planned to do. Why? Well, first of all, if you are seriously considering Trinity, my answers to the ten questions I pose about the life of students outside the classroom will either convince you that this university is just about perfect for you, or what you hear in my remarks could make it exceedingly clear that this is the last place on earth that you would want anyone to pursue an undergraduate education.

But, even if that’s your reaction, you will still be glad you stayed alert, because you will get a list of ten swell questions that you can ask at every school you’re considering until you get the answers that describe the academic environment you are seeking. I think my students call this a win-win situation.

Your first question might be, since Trinity’s intercollegiate competitions seem to be destined never to be nationally telecast on Saturday afternoons by any of the major networks and since Trinity doesn’t have national fraternities and sororities, what in the world do your students do for fun? Or, perhaps your students don’t do fun, perhaps they are all nerds and geeks.

Trinity University has fourteen local fraternities and sororities to which 30 percent of our students belong; they do not have houses, we do not permit them to pledge or to haze, and, most of the time, these organizations contribute positively to social life at Trinity, sponsoring chili cook-offs, casino nights, tailgate parties, dances, et cetera, as well as providing opportunities for developing and honing interpersonal and leadership skills.

There are two student activities that attract the largest numbers of our students. The first is TUVAC, the Trinity University Volunteer Action Council, through which our students provide over ten thousand hours annually to those less fortunate in the San Antonio community. (Because our students are so self-assured and assertive, I’m anxious when I see a group of them on a Saturday morning who tell me they are on their way to paint some old lady’s fence. I have to ask: does that old lady want her fence painted?) Our students give time to every kind of community services agency: the battered women’s shelter, middle school mentoring, the juvenile detention center, the Humane Society, Habitat for Humanity, AIDS hospices, Adopt-A-Grandparent, and on and on.

The second most popular student activity here is intramurals, in which 75 percent of our students play on some sort of team in usual and quite unusual sports: water basketball, turkey trot, flickerball, golf scramble, inner-tube basketball, and the highly unseemly and inappropriately popular, coed flag football.

Our students play chess, shoot billiards, and hang out in the Coates University Center Tigers’ Den. They are team members or spectators of many intercollegiate athletic events—football, baseball, volleyball, basketball, tennis, soccer, swimming—in all of which we