reporter volume xxxiv number two winter 1968 1969 1968 PHI BETA KAPPA BOOK AWARDS WHITE OVER BLACK POETIC CLOSURE GREAT WATERS The presentation of Phi Beta Kappa's an of social and religious restraints, by ava reader's appreciation of the entire work. "Closure," she "announces and jus nual book awards took place at the Senate rice and by the example of Hispanic says, absence of further dinner on Friday evening, December sixth. practices, led to ready acceptance of tifies the development; The three $1000 prizes were awarded for slavery. Jordan traces the uneasy justifi it reinforces the feeling of finality, com books published in 1967-1968. cations which developed as slavery became pletion and composure which we value in institutionalized, as well as the growth and all works of art; and it gives ultimate the 1968 Ralph Emerson Winning Waldo ex decline of anti-slavery sentiment and ac unity and coherence to the reader's Award was White Over Black: American tivity during and after the Revolutionary perience of the poem by providing a point Attitudes Towards the Negro 1550-1812 War. His section on Jefferson is par from which all the preceding elements by Winthrop D. Jordan. It was published ticularly illuminating for its psychologi may be viewed comprehensively and their by the University of North Carolina Press cally oriented analysis of Jefferson's relations grasped as part of a significant for the Institute of American His design." Early influential ideas on this issue his hatred and Culture at Williamsburg, Vir tory for the institution and his ambivalence the be ginia. The Christian Gauss Award in In discussing interrelationship toward Negroes as individuals. tween structure and in a literary criticism was given to Barbara meaning poem, Herrnstein Smith for Poetic Closure: A As one member of the award committee Mrs. Smith deals with many different Though the was be types of poems from the familiar and Study of How Poems End, published by study gun years before the current civil rights traditional to the most novel open-ended the University of Chicago Press. The "concrete" it is quite indispensable for a and or arranged Science Award was presented to Sir Alis- agitation, spatially full appreciation of the realities and well- poems. She also compares with the ter Hardy for Great Waters, published by poetry springs and the dilemmas of the contem other arts such as music and painting. Harper and Row. Mrs. Smith and Mr. struggle." One of the judges "No one who Jordan attended the dinner and accepted porary noted, reads Mrs. Smith's book will ever again their awards in person. Sir Alister was Mr. Jordan is now associate professor of read a poem without some thought as to represented by his editor who read a state at the of California at history University ends." how scientist-author had prepared. it ment the Berkeley. Prior to coming to Berkeley, he taught at Brown and the University of Mrs. Smith is a member of the literature White Over Black probes the crucial, Michigan and was a fellow from 1961 to faculty of Bennington College. She has formative years of the American expe 1963 at the Institute of Early American also taught at Brandeis University where rience and discusses those attitudes which History and Culture at Williamsburg, she received her undergraduate and grad set Negroes apart and led to their enslave Virginia. uate degrees. ment. Mr. Jordan demonstrates that even in Tudor England Negroes were con In Poetic Closure, Barbara Herrnstein In Great Waters, British scientist Sir Alis sidered radically different because of their Smith deals not only with how a poem ter Hardy writes the first non-technical color, religion and life-style. In the New ends, but with how the end of a poem account of one of the pioneer oceano- reinforced a lack reveals and affects and World, these views, by its total design the (continued on back cover) Winthrop D. Jordan Barbara Herrnstein Smith Sir Alister Hardy www.pbk.org LIKE IT IS: The University Today by HUSTON SMITH One last time, then let the slogan die. Strictly speaking, of to break through the backward pull of the outgrown good. it's is," course, impossible to "tell it like it for the world is no Myths repeatedly depict young heroes challenging old, oppres one it is way, many ways to many people. But insofar as the sive orders represented by monsters, tyrants, fathers, and (in phrase calls for candor it has a point which overuse hasn't the case of matriarchies) mothers. quite exhausted. So I shall try to heed it while turning it in To understand the we need etiologies more part on the student generation itself. What is the university specific, university gap" less perennial, than "generation or "generational con like to a journeyman one too old to wear pend today teacher, flict." Let me suggest seven. There are others, but these bear ants or sport a yet enough to delight in the beard, young 'feel.' on the university's new Nehru jacket his daughter made him for Christmas? directly 1. Today's students are older, not in age but in maturity. Man" I In "Early Maturation in (Scientific American, January 1968), J. M. Tanner summarizes evidence that adds up to I am not alone, or even in the minority. I suspect, in sensing the fact that though students continue to enter college at the a quality of surrealism creeping over the ivy-coated campus same chronological age, they are roughly two years more I used to know. For twenty years I felt obtuse in the face of mature physiologically and emotionally are the aspects that questions from parents and reporters as to whether that year's concern Dr. Tanner, but given recent improvements in educa students were different. Considering the changes that were tion we can add intellectually as well. If today's students seem roiling society, it seemed they should be, but I really couldn't more bright, bearded and bosomy, it is because they are. One see it. Well that, at least, has changed. To see differences today way to bring the system back into phase would be to admit requires no anthropological elbow. I go to a faculty meeting students two years earlier; high schools are already often and find the hall preempted students inclusion. by demanding them over-prepared. The other alternative is to "teaching" delivering I find myself a course on which Responsibility change the university's system of organization and discipline. students both initiated and run. For six weeks I couldn't even Having been designed for adolescents, this system is now locate one of its sections and had fantasies of its students appropriate for high schools and needs to be superseded by a hiding out on Bunker Hill plotting for academic credit new system befitting adults. If college students are intransigent the university's demise. When I can locate the class I am free in refusing to accept certain compulsions their predecessors to participate, but my only duty will be to endorse for the accepted without question, it is because, having in goodly registrar's benefit at semester's close the grades the students numbers become have passed a threshold of "Pass-fail" adults, they dig lay on my desk. If, that is, there are to be grades. nity across which they will not and should not retreat. having been instituted two years ago, it is no longer progres 2. Today's students are not more mature: are sive. The petition from the current class is that the rating scale only they "pass-pass." more experienced. travelled be advanced to To me this looks like a student Having more and been bombarded from television and are more version of failsafe, but then I'm over thirty. Even the junior infancy by radio, cinema, they experienced but in addition are more experi faculty seem different. How is it that so many look like Che generally, they enced in two specific respects worth mentioning. Guevera: boots, black jackets, black beards, well-built? And do so often walk in pairs as stride toward me why they they One of these is sex. How much more experienced they are in the down long, narrow halls? evening here is a moot point, but the answer seems to be: considerably, both directly and vicariously through magazines, books, and II theater. To enter the world of sex is to be initiated into the major that separates youth from manhood. It intro Wbat accounts for the changes that have come over the cam mystery duces a different sense of self, a sense of being in full measure pus, rendering it alien to those like myself who for years have gap" a man or a woman. Note, by the way, that here as in the called it home? The "generation is too simple an explana preceding point, dislocation arises not from widening of the tion if true at all. Since that phrase became a cliche I have generation but its reduction. The are thrown feel more gap by times taken to asking parents of collegiates whether they out of joint because university structures have not changed removed from their children than they did from their own to take sufficient account of the fact that students are now parents at a comparable age. Without exception they have felt more like their teachers. closer. This may reveal no more than that parents feel closer children to but at least it doesn't to their children than parents, The other respect in which student experience has been en increasing.