Enema U After 55 Years

Fifty-five years ago, I was a college student.  Though still in high school, I took a single class at the community college two nights a week.  Today, I’m retired and I am once again a college student, but there have been a few changes in the last half century.

Perhaps the best change in education in the last fifty years is that college is multicultural today.  Enema U is in the arid deserts of New Mexico, but there are students from everywhere—literally from all around the world at the university.  And there are students from every imaginable background attending, too.  There were a lot of barriers to a good education back in the sixties, and thankfully, most of them have now been lowered dramatically, if not eliminated.

But I want to talk about the other changes to college.  These are mostly just the things I see as I attend class, study in the library, or walk across campus to hear a really good lecture about the painting styles of Hieronymus Bosch.

First, the classrooms are absolutely different.  In 1969, the classroom had bright fluorescent lights, open windows, a couple of fans, blackboards, and  (frequently) ash trays on the tables.  Today’s classrooms are dimly lit by LED bulbs so as not to wash out the electronic screens and projected images.  White boards and smart boards have almost completely replaced the blackboards.  And while there are still a few smokers on campus, they have all been moved to the entrances of buildings where their second-hand smoke can be enjoyed by everyone.

Today, an air-conditioned classroom with windows that still work is a rarity.  One of my classes was moved to a zoom meeting last week because the classroom’s air conditioning had failed and, though it is a beautiful classroom, due to its modern design, it would have been intolerable without air conditioning.  This is new to me:  thinking back, I believe I was a sophomore at the University of Houston before I ever saw an air-conditioned classroom.  

The most obvious change, of course, is technology.  The most sophisticated thing I owned used to be a slide rule, which is something so useless today that even my instructors have never heard of one.  Today’s students have calculators, computers, iPads, and smart phones.  The number of students still taking notes by hand on paper is a small minority.  In both of my classes today, some of the students attending are physically hundreds of miles away.  In my art history class, one of the students—previously a friend of mine—was attending a zoom class from a bench in the middle of the Metropolitan Museum of Art!  He was actually sitting in front of a painting by the artist we were studying.  (Bill, I’m so jealous I’ve decided to hate you for a few weeks!)

With only two courses left before completing my degree in Economics, I have yet to purchase a textbook in that field.  All of my course work has been delivered electronically, with online sources.  Once they’ve graduated, if any of the former economic students needs a reference book…. Well, evidently books are becoming irrelevant.  Students do their research online, rarely using the library anymore.  In a few decades, if you look up the word ‘library’ in the dictionary, the definition will say:  “li-brar-y (noun) Warehouse of yet to be scanned bound paper.”

There is a little noted side effect of all this technology:   No one can do math anymore.  In my economics class, we work with fairly complicated formulas, but in working with them you still have to know how to do simple math—something that today’s students simply cannot do in their heads anymore.  As I grew up before calculators and my instructor grew up in Kurdistan where calculators were relatively scarce, we found no problem performing simple math problems like multiplying 16 by 22 in our heads.  The rest of the class looked like they had been asked to perform magic—every hand reached for a phone to use the calculator.  After class, one of the students told me his elementary school no longer taught the multiplication tables.  If there is ever a shortage of batteries, the world will return to the dark ages in a week.

There is another  change brought about by technology:   I never hear any music on campus anymore.  There are no students playing guitars on the quad, no music in the student center, and as I walk by the dorms I hear no one playing their stereo too loud.  That’s not to say the students aren’t listening to music—they are—but it is all being done with wireless ear pods.  You see students everywhere (even during classes), sitting there with little white buttons in their ears.  Whatever they are listening to doesn’t seem to make them very happy, as they have a look of intense concentration as they live in their private worlds.

Students are different these days, too.  Back in 1969, it was the middle of the protests against the Vietnam War.  There was a general sense of involvement—students were engaged and truly believed that they were changing society.  Even at Enema U, students believed that their protests were bringing about change.  If you look at the sidewalk just outside of the administration Building, Abattoir Hall, you can dimly see scratched in the sidewalk the words “Stop the Bombing”.  Evidently messing up that freshly poured concrete worked, since it’s been more than fifty years since the US Air Force bombed any part of Southeast Asia.

Today, I can’t imagine a single cause that riles the students into a fury.  The university has raised the tuition into the stratosphere, has leased out the cafeterias to a company that serves swill at high prices, has turned a thriving bookstore into an empty t-shirt shop, and has generally ignored the welfare of the students.  All without a student protest.  I’m not sure these students would protest if you set fire to them.

Fifty years ago, students were dirt poor.  Today, a walk through the student parking lot shows a whole lot of very nice, expensive cars.  According to the Wall Street Journal, more students today are working while going to school—perhaps because of the higher tuition.  Despite the stories of students surviving on bottom ramen, every student seems to have an expensive phone and a relatively new laptop.  Perhaps this is because of the ready availability of student loans.

Okay, enough comparisons.  Who has/had it better—students today, or students half a century ago?

Well, I have to take the Vietnam War and the draft out of the equation.  There was a certain pressure to pass that calculus exam so as not to lose your student deferment back in the sixties that has no parallel today.  There was nothing to motivate a study session like knowing that if you blew the exam you would get drafted.  

Other than that, I think being a college student in the sixties was easier than today, if only because it was more affordable.  Even with the advances in technology that exist today, I think the opportunities to learn are about equal.  I guess there is one thing that has never changed:   if you apply yourself, and you work at it, you can still get a good education if you want it bad enough.

The Royal Principality of Enema U

Late night television the other night was airing the Cary Grant movie, To Catch a Thief.  It’s a great old classic, but what grabbed me was the scene where Grace Kelly was driving her car a little recklessly down a twisting coastal road.  Twenty-five years later, Princess Grace died when she missed a sharp turn on a similar road and her car plunged off a cliff.

This, of course, got me to thinking about Monaco—the tiny, strange, little kingdom that served as a home to Princess Grace.  Then, from Monaco, I started thinking about Enema… What can I say?—I have a mind like a ping pong ball (which, if you have been reading this blog for long, you already know).

In any case, it turns out that Enema U and Monaco have a great deal in common.  Once that occurred to me, the similarities became obvious.  In reality, Enema U is a small medieval fiefdom.

First off, there are the matters of size and content.  Monaco is a small, self-contained little country with its own government, laws, permanent population, police department, fire department and a migrant work force—all fitting into 482 acres.   Enema U, in comparison, has its own governing body, with separate laws, a permanent population, an independent fire department, a police force, and a migrant work force—all fitting into 900 acres.  

Yes, Enema U is slightly larger than Monaco, but this is a ag school, so we need a little more room for the cows.  

Monaco has an art gallery and a museum.  Enema U has an art gallery and a museum (as well as an excellent art department).  Monaco has a hospital, a clinic, and doctors.  Enema U has a hospital, a clinic, doctors, a medical school, and a nursing school.  Monaco has fine restaurants and hotels.  Enema U has a hotel and…. Well, Monaco is ahead on that one.  No one outside of administration has ever said that Enema U had even fair dining facilities.  The campus restaurants are leased out to a company that specializes in providing food for universities, airports, and prisons.  (I’ve always suspected that the best food goes to the prisons:  after all, no psychology major has ever shivved a cafeteria worker because there wasn’t enough ketchup.)

For centuries, Monaco has been ruled by the head of a royal family, the Grimaldis, with various ministers under him to set policy.  While Enema U does not have a royal family, we do have royalty.  Enema U has a football coach, who must be the ruler, since he is the highest paid employee on campus.  Under His Royal Coachness, there is a bus load of minor officials:  a chancellor, a provost, a dozen deans, and enough vice-presidents to form a healthy chorus of yes-men.

Monaco has a state flag and a national anthem and it is a voting member of the United Nations.  Enema U has a school song, a mascot, official colors, and is a full-fledged member of the NCAA—an organization that is far more powerful than the United Nations.  Monaco is multicultural and plays host to people from around the world, many of whom speak languages from all over the world.  Enema U has both students and staff from all across the globe and even teaches a variety of foreign languages.  

Monaco has a luxurious casino that provides most of the operating capital to run the monarchy.  Enema U would open a casino in a flash if the state government would allow it—it could be run as a joint operation by the Math Department and the Economics Department.  Until the state gives the green light, the school has a foundation that collects donations from alumni, but how the monies are spent is kept so secret that the CIA could take lessons in security.

Once a year, Monaco has a spectacular Grand Prix auto race.  Enema U has almost daily races by the students all over the surrounding community.  Hell, one student even managed to roll his car in the parking lot—let’s see Monaco top that.

Monaco has thousands of tourists daily, whose sole purpose is to spend money and leave quickly.  Enema U has the same thing, but they are called students.  Monaco has a large workforce that lives outside its border.  Enema U has a small army of staff members who commute daily, work for small wages, then leave the campus to return home.  Monaco has limited housing, but there are thousands who live within the small realm.  Enema U has thousands of freshmen who are required to live on campus in housing that is, at best, limited.

The main business of Monaco is gambling.  People come from all over the world to play the games of chance, winning and losing large sums of money in a palatial casino.  And here is the biggest difference between Enema U and Monaco.  While Enema U has a palatial football stadium where games are played, the cost is at such a high price that there are only losers.