University of North Carolina Chapel Hill - Yackety Yack Yearbook (Chapel Hill, NC)

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Perhaps I was overly-sheltered and abnormally shy in the midst of know- ing upperclassmen and even some of my more sophisticated fellow first- year men; nonetheless, Carolina was more than a little frightening in its sheer size. One felt then that it mat- tered little whether he learned his Modern Civilization (or Social Sci- ence, or whatever its present nomen- clature) or studied his botany or his English 21 (Shakespeare, Chaucer and Milton neatly summed up by tweedy and intellectually impeccable professors). No matter what he did, the University continued to grind on. This was years ago, and now several thousands more are enrolled here. The IBM ' s grow hot with the effort of cataloging, processing and dispos- ing of the faceless names who some- how comprise Carolina. And how much more lost must some freshman now from Rutherfordton or Clinton Page 19

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freedom, its stimulating environment that lias influenced, molded and per- haps inspired such diverse personali- ties as Frank P. Graham and Junius Scales, Thomas Wolfe and Terry Sanford, Luther Hodges and Robert Welch — how can this wonderfully- varied environment have failed us the students? In several ways. The simple fact that Craige Dormitory lies fifteen minutes from the Old Well is a tacit admission that the size of the University is rapidly overtak- ing its quality. Lying like a sand- dripped castle all over the town, with the new dormitories as far away from the center of campus life (whatever that may be), Carolina approaches complete objectivity and dehumani- zation of the individual student. I can only speak for myself, but as a freshman whose first lodging was the inelegant basement of Cobb, and whose second abode was the new- smelling suites of Avery, I can say that I felt about at home in Chapel Hill as a backwoods farmer would feel at a Kennedy bossa-nova fete. Page 18

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or Tarboro (or even the state ' s sole metropolis Charlotte, and its aspiring kin Winston-Salem and Greensboro) — how much more an unmeaning cog must the incoming student now feel? Among ten thousand, what is one ? Of course the answer is that the individual student still can achieve, can reach his own goals and can carve out his own educational experi- ence, bounded only by the limits of his own energy, talent and desire. But how many are lost in the massive conglomerative classes that become more and more the rule rather than the exception? A personal remark, teacher-to-student, means more and endures longer than the most erudite mass lecture ever can or will. The state of education at the University is nowhere near the state-witchcraft of 1984, but it does border on 1964, where professors no longer assign papers because the huge numbers of themes would require too much effort to grade; where bright and amoral students take quizzes with impunity in packed classrooms for lesser-en- dowed but equally uncaring friends; and where the student who cares and asks is hissed by his seven-score class- mates who desire only the uninter- rupted hour of note-taking. Intelli- gent growth is fine, but it is a gluttonous attempt to educate tens of thousands within the walls of out- moded and ill-equipped classrooms which almost palpably bulge with ' tttanmuim Page 20