for three years, and now the
reactionaries have shot us
down.’
-Dean Charles N. Somers
of Nasson College’s New
Division
. . . America’s ‘best experiment in higher education’
succumbs to traditional pressure
Let’s
use Nasson College as a model of this country and hope that it isn’t. It is one thing for a vision to die; another
for it to die inevitably. But as we all
know, when a man learns to soar he must do so discreetly. Otherwise, those who cannot, prompted by
vast ambivalence, will latch on to him, and wistful of his buoyancy, be content
to break him down to their own stumbling rate.
As my father says: It’s the crabs-in-the-barrel effect. That is what has happened to Nasson College.
Nasson is a 57-year-old liberal arts
college in Springvale, Maine.
Springvale, a village in the township of Sanford, birthplace of the Palm
Beach suit, has a partially condemned, heavily weathered and sagging five-story
wood frame shoe factory that straddles a littered stretch of the Mousam River;
and – it has Nasson College. The old
history of the school is not so important here – for 23 years it was a girls’
two-year college, expanded to four years in 1935, and went co-ed in 1952. Nowadays, it draws students from over 25
states and several foreign countries, the largest contingent from
Massachusetts.
Three years ago, through action of the board
of trustees and “administrative fiat,” as the current acting president says,
Nasson set up an experimental new division.
The new program brought the college its greatest glory, but now, a year
before the charter experimental class can graduate, most of the new division’s
students and many of its faculty are packing their bags, raffling their
furniture, and exiting en masse for
several other experimental colleges.
Their departure will drop an operating deficit of about $150,000 on
Nasson, which relies 98 percent on student fees. It threatens the building program. It makes new dining hall and library additions unnecessary. And its wake of academic confusion leaves
the college little definite to tell applicants for next year’s entering
classes.
The New Division has been a learning commune
as hip as anything on
the American college scene.
This is hardly a common occurrence in American education, but a close look at Nasson dissipates the sense of surprise pretty fast. Nasson’s New Division has been a learning commune as hip as anything anywhere on the American college scene – no grades; no required classes; co-ed dorms; extensive student participation in social, academic and discipline policy; independent study in ‘provinces of knowledge,’ not in courses or departments. It has almost been what student revolutionists are demanding on nearly every other major college campus. “We don’t recommend it for everyone,” one student says.
Another student, moderator of the
faculty-student town meeting—one man,
one vote—that has governed the division, comments that many New Division
members have passed through an anxious free-wheeling stage before learning to
handle their freedom. And conversation
with these people makes clear what you get after the rites of passage: tough,
confident characters of the sort that come to mind when you think of Israeli
kibbutzim: wary, the genuine article as far as latter-day social
frontiersmanship is concerned.
Furthermore, they are smart.
The First Division, Nasson’s traditional
school with 700 students to the New Division’s 200, seems on the other hand a
bit of a flaccid place. Most of its
students are nice kids. Some of them
say they would not want New Division freedom; others say they would like a
little of it but not all. Several girls
declare themselves social ‘traditionalists.’
A boy thinks the New Division has a right to experiment but he isn’t
sure they should. He says he does not
like the New Division’s ‘dress mode’—‘too much like the Boston Common.’ He is a freshman. Some say they would like to take New Division courses.
On the whole, the old division seems a cut
above a junior college, filled with students cautious of being turned loose,
who still need their lives structured by others. Nasson’s vitality had gone a half-mile up the road to the New
Division quarters where the innovators provided their own structures.
The difference in student bodies, though,
does not approximate that of the faculties.
The 17-man New Division faculty has been young and somewhat
indistinguishable from the student body.
According to New Division Dean Charles N. Somers, the close ‘living and
learning’ situation ‘means something to us, is precious to us.’ The programs have had a ‘seductive quality,’
he says, and some of the faculty have turned down other jobs to stay in
them. Some of the New Division faculty
was recruited by students.
Of the old division faculty, what can be
said? A junior from the New Division offers
this observation: ‘In the dining room,
New Division professors sit with the students.
First Division faculty doesn’t.’
That tells the tale. What can be
added? The traditional faculty is
competent but straight out of the tweedy boola-boo bygones. It is a faculty that has apparently been
faithful to the school. Jack Lyons, vice president and acting head of Nasson,
explains that a conflict of philosophies in education is less a part of the
college problem than one might think.
He’s probably right. It’s a
clash of philosophies in living that has destroyed Nasson’s experiment.
The only real surprise here is that the
demise has been so peaceful, so low keyed.
It must be the Down East climate.
autonomously. The board ended the autonomy;
the New Division
saw through the haze of words
and was fed up.
This story, it should be made clear, imposes a considerable problem of tenses. Should Nasson’s New Division be verbed in the present ‘is,’ the past ‘was,’ or the past perfect ‘had been?’ In mid-May, the time of writing, the New Division most definitely ‘is’ – is on the way out. In June, the time of reading, it ‘was’ and is a ‘has been.’ Yet, as of June, the New Division in some sense still ‘is’ and will be even in September, because no one at Nasson has officially abolished it. The confusion of tenses reflects the subtle de facto changes that have been worked in Springvale.
It all began in mid-winter when some of the
older forces at the school began worrying about re-accreditation -–due in
1970. The argument, Lyons explains,
was: ‘How can an accrediting team understand the New Division if we don’t
understand it?’ According to Lyons,
‘re-accreditation is the whip they beat you with.’ To Somers, it was a ‘red herring’ all the way, an excuse of the
old division faculty to jab a program it had detested for three years.
At any rate, the re-accreditation issue
prompted the board of trustees to call in an outside consultant. Dr. Paul Dressel of Michigan State filled
the bill and arrived on campus in early January. The key points of his report were that Nasson’s faculties be
united and that Lyons, then a financial officer with only six months at the
school, be appointed acting administrative chief.
Almost immediately, Lyons donned the
administrative headdress while college president Roger C. Gay quietly repaired
to his home in Rangeley, Maine, 90miles to the north; and by March, the board
of trustees swung definitively toward unification. The New Division town meeting didn’t want the merger and decided
to picket ‘in defense of the status quo.’
The sit-in at the administration building did not last long – two days
plus hour-a-day picketing over a week. It was peaceful, featured a mock funeral
for the New Division, and was called off when the board appeared to be
reversing itself.
At about that time, in March, an
all-college referendum—both divisions—was held. Eighty-five percent of the students voted affirmatively to give
each student the right to register in either the old or new division. The New Division faculty supported the
proposal 100 percent; but 42 of the 44 traditional faculty members voted
against it. For
the
New Division, the vote confirmed who the enemy was.
Then, on April 1, an old division professor
was appointed academic chief of both divisions, a newly created post. There was concern about who he represented
and what he was doing in the role. On
April 21, it all became clear.
to the Nasson
experiment. He had spent two unhappy
years at a
traditional liberal arts school. ‘I
didn’t learn
anything until I
got here.’
The board of trustees issued a list of resolutions, the first of which, in the service of faculty unification, abolished the organizational structure of the old and new divisions as of June. While purporting to guarantee the existence of the New Division program, the resolutions put the matter in the hands of ‘the established faculty governance,’ the faculty senate, which in a unified college would be preponderantly an old division senate. The New Division had heretofore been completely free of the faculty senate.
There were other resolutions and much more
can be said. But although the factions
at Nasson claim their situation is highly complex, it really isn’t. The experimental division could exist only
autonomously; the board ended the autonomy, the New Division members saw
through the haze of resolutions and were fed up. Several other experimental schools in Florida and the Rockies – like
Nasson’s New Division, participants in the Union for Research and
Experimentation in Higher Education—offered to take transfers. These solicitations gave the town meeting an
idea. There will now be two major bloc
transfers—about 80 to Grand Valley State College in Allendale, Michigan, and
about 40 to the College of the Potomac in Herndon, Virginia. Other transfers will be scattered around,
and a few New Division students will stay.
The point of unification, Lyons explains,
was to end the polarization of the faculties.
This, he says, was its sole focus.
There was too much friction and hostility and it all stemmed, he says,
from an initial mistake: some of the old faculty should have been allowed to
participate in forming the New Division.
The unification is designed to correct the error. Experimentation will slow down, he says, and
‘there is a distinct possibility that the old faculty could ruin the New
Division.’ The chances of preserving
the current experimental programs, he says, are ‘zilch. I’m very pessimistic. Whatever happens, the
New Division is decimated. But it can
be rebuilt with time.’
Lyons’ appraisal is what you call straight
shooting. His footnote is: ‘A man who has a part in the program has less reason
to be hostile or threatened by experimental education.’
Nasson, in
effect, has decided to start over again, to keep its traditional faculty happy.
It made its choice. The old faculty now
has its challenge: to experiment in its own style. The old division dean thinks it will grab the opportunity. So does the chairman of the faculty
senate. The question is whether they
are up to anything relevant; and that remains to be seen.
In the meantime, 200 New Division students
think they have been double crossed in mid-career. And they are more than justified.
But at this point you might be wondering why
the procedure has been so covert, why the board and administration did not
simply announce they were abolishing the current experimental program because
it resulted in a divided campus. There
are several reasons: First, a provision
had been inserted in the college constitution that seemed to guarantee the New
Division until 1970. But that is hardly
the key. Lyons explains what the other
reason is. ‘The raison d’etre of Nasson is to do something special,’ he says, ‘to
experiment rather than fall into the lockstep of traditional liberal education
that has been tied up by the big colleges.’ For Nasson to present itself as
hostile to experimentation is to dig its own grave. It needs the experiment-bent student for bread and butter. Applications to the First Division have been
dropping; those to the New Division burgeoning.
The Nasson dining commons is one of the few
places on the campus where old and new division members regularly mingle. It is well-windowed, bright with a
bare-beamed austere feel: high ceilings and low steam tables of unspiced
institutional fare. Students must
discard their own paper, separate their own silverware for the dishwasher.
Two third-year students in the New Division
discussed the college over fried chicken and beef pie. One explained his
indebtedness to Nasson. If it hadn’t
been for the experimental program, he said, he would not have tried to make it
through college. He had spent two unhappy years at a traditional liberal arts
school. ‘I didn’t learn anything until
I got here,’ he said. He traced
Nasson’s problem to ‘petty bickering between the faculties that you wouldn’t
expect of grown people.’ And he did not
let the New Division off the hook. ‘The
students are caught in the middle,’ he said, and if given the opportunity to
solve the problem, could do so themselves.
His companion seconded the appraisal,
adding that ‘the New Division faculty can afford to hold out—they’ve been
offered contracts; but the students have no place to go—they’d be more willing
to compromise.’ He made it clear,
however, that he was talking about third-year students. ‘We are urging first-and-second-year people
to leave,’ he explained, then offered a personal note. ‘I’d prefer the Army to the old division,’
he said.
Late in the evening there was a gathering in one of the New Division common rooms. From downstairs came hideous screaming. A play, written by a New Division student, was being rehearsed (I remember the chairman of the faculty senate commenting, unlike anyone else I talked to, that he is ‘not sure it’s true that the New Division brought any liveliness of spirit to the school – not in athletics, not in drama.’
‘They’re dying,’ one of the students in the
room explained.
Most of the conversation focused on a party
planned for the following week-end,
Parents Weekend. It was to be a
bit of a protest, a bit of a put-on, and ‘the last chance to get everyone
together.’ The town meeting was prepared
to kick about $1500 into the festivities because there was no reason to
preserve its kitty for the usual purposes: to finance independent study
projects and travel that could be paid for in no other way.
Even
though the forum had incorporated itself as The Society For Educational
Ventures, to maintain contacts during the coming diaspora, there was no reason
to hold back. As the party turned out,
the New Division awarded itself honorary doctorates, and bestowed the same
degree on Springvale’s pizza man, who spoke at the ceremony allowing as how he
had benefited in other than material ways by having the experimental school in
town. The occasion was highly charged
with emotion: ‘it was touching, funny and sad,’ said one participant.
Conversation
that night also touched a few legal issues.
Some of the students had found lawyers willing to test whether the
college could cut short their program. But few were going to stay at Nasson
long enough to see a court case. Other
students were in hock to the school and their loans would become due upon
departure. They didn’t want to pay
until they could complete the education they set out to get and which Nasson
seemed to be refusing them in mid-stream.
The ACLU was interested in some of those cases.
The tone of talk, though, and the mood of
the experimental school, was one of gloom.
One student explained that despite the tough language of tactics against
the old college and of plans for transfer, ‘there is a lot of remorse—we’re
losing friends. A lot of these people
we’ll never see again.’ From others,
however, came the insistence that the
mood was more of anger then of sorrow.
Their comments ran like this:
‘Even if they guaranteed the whole program, Id still leave.’ ‘If they don’t want us, why don’t they just
say so?’ And, ‘This was a fifth rate
college when we came; it’ll be tenth rate when we leave.’
The New Division students have taken it
personally, especially the third-year people.
When they arrived there was just an idea. They built the curriculum, the governance and the social
organization as surely as did the faculty.
And like the students, the New Division faculty has some strong feelings. Art Webster, social studies professor, had a dream of moving the community intact to the College of the Potomac, a new school opening in September. His feeling is for the ‘community.’ But his vision was riddled by practicality. The College of the Potomac is not yet accredited, and going there meant starting all over. Not everyone was game. Aiming just to finish up, many students sought established experimental programs. Their applications went to Grand Valley State, Goddard, Hofstra, Bard, Windham, and others. The faculty was also exhausted. According to Dean Somers, it would be too hard to build again from scratch, ‘especially after being slapped down here.
Somers’ feelings run to scorching invective, ‘We’re not sorry we’ve been here,’ he says. ‘The forces operating on American education did not touch us internally. But we’ve been a moving target for three years and now the reactionaries have shot us down. The way we felt, it was the best experiment in higher education in America, but they killed it. Murder in Maine, that’s what it is.
‘If it had just gone on, the needs of the students would have prevailed, and students in both divisions indicated they wanted to take courses in both divisions.
‘Who in his infinite wisdom,’ Somers asks, ‘said two divisions couldn’t exist on the same campus?’
Well – that is
the question.