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Show ID co ai c 3 I -a to co 3 H a. .5? to co O c 0) 6 0) 3 o ac CM Historical Editorial: Dr. LaVon B. Carroll w eber College entered my life in 1955 when I enrolled, very cautiously, as a "non-traditional" student, i.e. a bored, frustrated housewifemother returning to college after 17 years of domesticity. At that time, Weber was a two-year institution undergoing a dramatic change of location from the small, compact campus in downtown Ogden to the cheat-grass, scrub-oak covered hills southeast of the city. The upper campus consisted of four flat-topped buildings in a row and a technical building to the northeast, all with the architectural distinction of snug chicken coops. East of Building Four was a shabby, disreputable-looking structure hauled in from the war-time housing development at Washington Terrace. It housed the "library" and the student union and was approporately dubbed the TUB (temporary union building)! There were no trees, little grass, few shrubs and only one sidewalk, but there was lots of parking space if you didn't mind gravel, weeds and, occasionally, mud. When I graduated in 1958 with a 4.0 average and was asked to address the commencement ceremonies in the Ogden Tabernacle, I had reached a high water mark in my life. I have received three more degrees and many honors but few events have been more joyous than that lovely June evening when I received my A.A. from the old Weber Junior college. Little did I dream then that in a few years I would return to join the faculty and to spend the next 24 years with the college that was soon to become a four-year institution and grow rapidly to 10 times the size of the original college. By the time I was hired to teach English in 1962, the east part of the union building had been built, a gymnasium was finished, and the fine arts building was under construction. All 24 years that I have been at Weber, I have taught to the background noise of bulldozers, drills and hammers. 7 V;, : Although I entered the profession at a very turbulent time, the "sixties" were an exhilarating era. Students were stimulating, involved, receptive of ideas. Perhaps my own enthusiasm was infectious, but I feel that there was a quality of intellectual vitality and a more profound engagement in education that is lacking now. While Weber never suffered the disruption and riots of other larger more sophisticated campuses, it was impacted by the baby boom of World War II, the influx of young men trying to get out of going to Vietnam, and the rising interest in political and social problems. it As we advanced into the 70's, a new atmosphere pervaded the campus. Although it remained a perennial issue, smoking in the union building was not the most serious of concerns for the majority of students. There was an influx of Vietnam veterans, ethnic minorities, non-traditional students -all dissatisfied with what they considered the oppression of the old establishment. They rebelled against irrelevant academic standards and unrealistic requirements of people who understood more about "real life" than those cloistered professors. The campus took on the look of the sixties. Students slouched around in Clorox-faded jeans in which they deliberately scuffed or cut holes to show that they were not wearing old-fashioned underwear. Their costumes were made up of old army blankets and assorted items from the Salvation Army or (in Utah) the D.I. They cultivated long, unwashed hair and untrimmed, frowzy beards, and frequently went barefoot to confound their elders and show their contempt for the decadent American middle-class. The drug culture surfaced and I recall how shocked I was to receive a research paper detailing the joys of shooting heroin. A new breed of professor, first modeled in Berkeley, surfaced. Faded Pendleton shirts, jeans and cowboy boots appeared in place of the neat business suits. Long hair and beards turned up on the younger more emancipated male profs, and they sauntered into class, put their boots up on the table and invited the students to "rap about Shakespeare." What was more difficult to adapt to than the sartorial eccentricities was the attitude adopted by the students who began to tell us what they wanted to learn and how they wanted to learn it. It became perilous to put any kind of "negative" correction on student compositions (writing seeming to be the most irrelevant of all college subjects), especially if the student was an ethnic minority or underprivileged. Charges of destroying self images, compounding failure experiences, even discrimination could arise from correcting spelling, punctuation or grammar. So when the opportunity arose for me to serve in administration, I accepted the position of assistant to the dean of continuing education. Even though I enjoyed my four years in the administration of Continuing Education and am deeply committed to the idea of "lifelong" learning (I feel it is the only way we can accomplish the ideal of higher education for everyone), the chief thing I learned from this experience was that I am first and last a classroom teacher. So in 1977, I returned full time to the English department where I have continued to teach in my way a bit olf-fashioned I was told by a freshman class (I expect the students to attend class, read books, write and turn in assignments, and not chew gum in class!). Under the leadership of Dr. Rodney Brady, stability was restored as we entered the 80's. ' The mood of the country had changed and a sharp turn to the right has resulted in a different college climate. While less politically and socially radical, today's students are not more rewarding to teach than their older brothers and sisters. Along with the rest of our society, many of them are caught up in the pathology of our times -the obsession with money, numbers and technology. Due to the relaxation of standards in the public schools in the previous decades, many students are even more poorly prepared for academic discipline. I call them the "kit" generation -they want packages and formulas that guarantee easy, instant success. They want degrees and certification rather than education, and what is worse, they don't seem to know the difference! Those of us in the liberal arts areas are under constant pressure, not so much to make our materials "relevant" but negotiable in terms of American status symbols: six-figure salaries, expensive cars, Lear jets and huge bank accounts. In the past few years, I have come to doubt seriously the feasibility of educating everyone, especially when there is such poor understanding of what education is and does. I have no quarrel with vocational-technical training; we need it and we will have it. But if our system is to work with any degrees of success, we must make clear distinctions as to what we are about. If we see our educational institutions as functioning largely to supply the great technological industrial complex of our society with essential skills, we are not doing any better than those political systems which we fear and oppose. Communist societies teach their members in this way as efficiently as we do. . . . ; ' :i,v,.,,f,Vti;V'l , --v , y y tit: 't,i i . . '' r ! PV I do not wish to end on a negative note, however. My experience at Weber has been rich and rewarding and generally far more positive than negative. I have had many splendid students whose lives I hope I have enriched. I have worked with many admirable people who, I am sure, would be an asset to an institution of higher learning anywhere. Weber State College has afforded me opportunities and profit that I would not have had otherwise. I am grateful to it and hope for its continued success and growth, not so much in size, but in maturity, wisdom, stability and those solid attributes for which institutions of higher learning exist. |