Bates College - Mirror Yearbook (Lewiston, ME)

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Student: What is the right way to think? Professor: lt's all relative. . . A Twenty Year Perspective My mind seems a spinning chiaroscuro compounded of dreams awaiting fulfillment and new areas of endeavor along with poignant memories of lives that have deeply touched my own, and of exciting and often sensitive discussions which, l am sure, have shifted my own views as often as those of you who were my students. Future fireside reminiscences will be immeasurably enriched by letters from graduates whose career decisions resulted from work here at Bates College, by the many heartwarming and sometimes tangy comments on final exam bluebooks, and by echoes of strident voices in class which challenged, how can you say that? There have been many changes at the College since 1965, my first year. lt has been a source of incalculable satisfaction to have aided and abetted the growth of the Department of Sociology and Anthropology from two persons to its present complement of seven. Moreover, the Bates' Faculty has dou- bled over the past twenty years, and given the fact rising costs and shrinking applicant pools have forced many schools to close their doors permanently, this must be seen as a major ac- complishment of the Administration. The quality of this Facul- ty has increased commensurately with its numbers . . . although given the amount and color of my hair, l wince a little at hearing about our bright, dynamic, and young Faculty as though each of those adjectives presumed the existence of the others! The range and quality of offerings, coupled with the in- telligence, training and dedication of this excellent faculty have placed Bates College among the finest colleges of its kind in the country - and certainly one of the most academically demanding. There are, to be sure, some danger signals on the horizon. One bridles under the increasing and arguably inordinate and, thus, debilitating pressure for faculty publication at a teaching oriented institution without allotting time to do so, as is the case in large universities. A second concern arises from a glance at curricular changes and reports of classroom ap- proaches providing reason to wonder if some faculty members who were undergraduates in the heady and cause-oriented days of the 1960's are making the crucial distinction between soap- box polemicism and objective classroom analysis in which all views are carefully considered. There most assuredly has been a change in the nature of the student body as is evidenced not only by the Porsches, Jaguars, Mercedes and Lamborghinis in student parking areas, but also by the discussions of social stratification in American Society class. This past semester we learned that sixty percent of the class came from backgrounds where parental income ex- ceeded 885,000 per year lalmost double my salary in the last year of my careerj and that these students were astonished to learn that this placed them in the top two or three percent income-wise in our society. The increasing affluence of students is affecting the College in ways too numerous to cite here. This is in no way intended as a criticism of the Ad- ministration, it is simply one of the givens of our time if col- leges are to survive, particularly under the Reagan philosophy. However, l think that students are more diligent now, albeit not as socially aware and concerned as the conscience-troubled students of the 1960's and early l970's. Students generally work very hard, but the goals seem less oriented toward chang- ing the society than toward moving up within that society. Yet, there is a very clear thread of quality in Bates students which weaves its way through all time periods and is very appealing. It is compounded of very high intelligence, basic decency, predisposition to give the benefit of the doubt, ebullience and a positive view of life, which makes this place ajoy in which to work. My own many personal failures, such as the inability to rid myself of nervousness prior to entering a classroom or to dissuade the faculty from voting in an incomprehensible cluster policy, or even to handle David NeIson's wicked left-handed serve and George Wigton's overhead smashes will, I am certain, be quickly blotted out by time and the memories of the many contacts with the students and faculty. To all of you in the Class of 1986 which this year's Mirror honors, l wish you the very best out there in that complex world of beauty and evil, where the choice is up to you. Be in touch, the chair by the hearth is cozy and the fire burns warm and bright. - George F etter was asked by the Editors of the 1986 Mirror to write this selection.