Jacob Lawrence, "Soldiers and Students," 1962
Jacob Lawrence, Soldiers and Students (1962)
Can a Game Be Literature?

Mark's Pages

June 3, 2010:

I never wanted to be one of the cool circle. The sophisticated older students who lived off campus, snorted coke, and slept with professors. I had very different reasons for being there.

I loved the idea of the place. That it existed at all. No matter its real world implementation was minimal. That glass was always half full.

The Red University. Island of freedom in the wider sea of conformity. Model for the free learning of the future.

In retrospect I believe this more strongly than ever. It was a lovely model for democratic, student-controlled education. Hardly a surprise though that the two jokers who wrote about it are blind to what mattered most. They were professors in that cool circle of coke-snorting sophisticates. Their minds were on other things.