Sex and Maoism at Princeton

Long ago when I was an undergraduate in Germany I found that the university’s solicitude for my entering self consisted of giving me a mimeographed address list of people who rented rooms to students. The authorities, from their Kafkaesque remoteness, also sponsored a small student union that served snacks. (I recall particularly a most repellent jam omelette.) That was all. What we did in our spare time, where or how or with whom we lived did not concern the university. Nor were there such recurrent checkups as November hours, midyears, finals, a dean’s list. A student attended a certain number of lectures, contributed papers for a certain number of seminars, then wrote a thesis which, if approved, gave him a degree. The function of the university remained to impart knowledge, neither more nor less.

I still feel today that such should be the function of the colleges here. What undergraduates do with their spare time and their spare nights, what they choose for sports and recreation, are their own affairs. It is really not a function of a college to supply dormitories, gymnasiums, stadiums, skating rinks, birth- control clinics, anything more in fact than libraries, laboratories, classrooms, and lecture halls. The elimination of all but these essentials would make college life singularly unattractive for the majority and would soon reduce the student population to an educable minority.

FR

About the Author

Francis Russell

Long ago when I was an undergraduate in Germany I found that the university’s solicitude for my entering self consisted of giving me a mimeographed address list of people who rented rooms to students. The authorities, from their Kafkaesque remoteness, also sponsored a small student union that served snacks. (I recall particularly a most repellent jam omelette.) That was all. What we did in our spare time, where or how or with whom we lived did not concern the university. Nor were there such recurrent checkups as November hours, midyears, finals, a dean’s list. A student attended a certain number of lectures, contributed papers for a certain number of seminars, then wrote a thesis which, if approved, gave him a degree. The function of the university remained to impart knowledge, neither more nor less.

I still feel today that such should be the function of the colleges here. What undergraduates do with their spare time and their spare nights, what they choose for sports and recreation, are their own affairs. It is really not a function of a college to supply dormitories, gymnasiums, stadiums, skating rinks, birth- control clinics, anything more in fact than libraries, laboratories, classrooms, and lecture halls. The elimination of all but these essentials would make college life singularly unattractive for the majority and would soon reduce the student population to an educable minority.