The Day the Rabbi Resigned (11 page)

“And the year after that and maybe for the next few years. A number of colleges have already closed down. The well-known schools, the prestige universities, won't feel it for a while, maybe never, but my guess is that they'll be taking in more and more students that they wouldn't have considered a few years ago. You might say that the bloom appears to be off. It's like any other business: in boom times it expands, and when there is a downturn, the weaker ones are driven to the wall.”

“But education is not a business,” Levine objected. “I know what you mean, of course. Down in Dallas, when oil was selling at thirty dollars a barrel and higher, people began building like crazy, and now when it's selling at about half that, we have any number of real estate firms filing for bankruptcy and dragging the banks that gave them construction loans with them. But colleges …”

“Well, colleges are in the real estate business, too. They got up a bunch of new buildings, too, dormitories, laboratories, classrooms. We didn't because we had no land to expand on, but we took over all the old brownstones on Clark Street and converted them into dormitories, mostly. You see, as a fall-back school, we get a lot of out-of-towners. We're no longer a local college where the students live at home.”

“Are we in trouble?”

“Not yet, but looking ahead …”

There was a silence for a little while as Macomber sipped his coffee and Levine blew smoke up at the ceiling. Then Levine asked, “So what do you plan to do?”

“I'm hoping to change the nature of the school. Make it a school of first choice rather than a fall-back school. Actually, it's what I've always wanted to do. It's my reason for coming here in the first place.”

“I've always wondered why you did,” said Levine, and then with a chuckle, “I'm sure it wasn't for the money.”

Macomber smiled. “No, it wasn't for the money. Fortunately, I don't depend on my salary.”

“And you certainly didn't take it for the prestige.”

“Hardly. Or you might say I took it because there was so little prestige attached to Windermere Christian.”

“I don't get it.”

“Do you remember Professor Cotton, Mark?”

“Of course, your guru,” he jeered. “What did they call you guys who were his disciples? Oh yeah, Cottontails.”

Macomber chuckled. “That's right, Cottontails. You never took a course with him, did you?”

“No, but at your urging I audited his course in Anthro 4 a couple of times when you were taking it.” He blew a smoke ring at the ceiling. “I remember in one of those lectures, he spent the whole hour talking about the modern college, how it was becoming a kind of factory for the manufacture of knowledge rather than a means for passing on knowledge from one generation to the next; and that it was encouraging competition rather than cooperation. It was interesting, but what it had to do with anthropology, I don't know.”

“He was demonstrating how an institution, the college, that we were all familiar with, could change under our very eyes, and no one would notice it. And that was twenty-five years ago, Mark. It's a lot worse today. It now characterizes all education in this country. Education used to be the way we discovered ourselves, our humanness, our relation to society and the world. Now it's just a contest to get ahead of one's fellows to the next plateau, from where you go on to the next escalation. It starts back in the grade school where the kids are separated according to perceived capacity, the track system. Those on the highest track are eligible to take the college prep course when they get into high school, and there the competition is for admission to the better colleges where the competition is for admission to the graduate and professional schools, and there they compete for jobs in the more prestigious law firms, or internships in the best-known hospitals. It just goes on and on. It's a rat race.”

“It's the character of the times, Don.”

“No, it isn't. It's a confusion between training and education that developed as a result of a sudden increase in technology.”

“All right,” said Levine good-naturedly. “So what can you do about it?”

“I can try to make Windermere an institution for education.”

“How?”

“By gradually changing the attitude of the faculty so that they focus on the student rather than on research. I'd get away from the ‘publish or perish' idea. The way things are now, the emphasis is all on research. The professor gets advancement by publishing in the learned journals, and the better he is at it, the fewer courses he's required to teach. It hasn't happened to us as yet. But in some of our better-known colleges, the most prestigious professors, whose reputations attracted students to their school, never see a student. Even if they are listed in the school catalogue as giving a course or two, the lectures are apt to be given by a graduate assistant. Well, I'm going to try to attract teachers; men and women who know their subjects and whose primary interest is in transmitting their knowledge to their students, to exciting their interest and curiosity. And if they find something of particular interest that they feel the world should know about and want to publish their findings, they'll do it on their own time. And I could try to stop some of the competitive spirit that has changed the student's desire to learn into the desire to beat his classmates.”

“And how would you do that?”

“By changing the marking system,” said Macomber promptly. “I'd have just two grades. Pass or Fail, or maybe Pass, Fail, and Honors. And I'd abolish so-called objective tests. Check one of five possible answers. That sort of thing. All testing in the humanities at least would be of the essay type.”

Levine nodded appreciatively. “It might work. At least, it might teach them how to write English. So why haven't you done it up till now? You say it's what you've wanted since you came here, that it's why you came here in the first place.”

“I didn't have the backing of the board. I knew I didn't when I came here, but I thought I'd be able to win them over; change some, replace some over the years.”

“And now, you feel you've got the board behind you?”

“Well, I've got the votes for certain things, but not for others. You know, in nominating members for the board, I didn't grill them on their attitudes any more than I did you when I asked you to join. I chose people whom I thought would agree with me. Sometimes I made mistakes. Cyrus Merton, for example. He is against changing the name, and not merely against it, but in active opposition. He knows that the school is not and never was Christian in anything but name. Nevertheless—”

“He doesn't want to change it.”

“That's right. It's a kind of superstition with him. He's fighting a kind of religious war, and he thinks to change the name would be a victory for secularism.”

“And why are you so anxious to change the name? I mean, how does the change affect your plans for the school?”

“As long as we were a fall-back school, it didn't make too much difference. It may even have helped. You see, a youngster applies to Harvard, say, and then to Tufts or B.U. in case he doesn't make it. But Tufts and B.U. have raised their standards, so there's a good chance that he won't get into any of the three. So they'd also apply to Windermere Christian because it is thought that faith, perhaps, as attested by a letter from their priest or minister, maybe will take the place of good grades. As you know, I tried to offset the effect of the name by instituting a course in Judaica and having it taught by a rabbi. I imagine your name on the Board of Trustees also helped,” he added with a smile.

Levine laughed. “I get two or three letters every year from coreligionists excoriating me for having converted.”

“Is that so? I'm sorry.”

“Oh, it doesn't bother me,” Levine assured him. “But what makes you think you'll be successful this year? Has Cyrus changed his mind?”

“Oh, I'm sure he hasn't. But this time I might be able to offer him a quid pro quo that improves my bargaining position. His niece—who is like his daughter, since he has no children of his own—is married to one of the young men on the faculty who hopes to get tenure. Well, I have the final say on who gets tenure.”

17

Included in Cyrus Merton's notice of the date for the June meeting of the Board of Trustees of Windermere Christian College of Liberal Arts was the usual agenda of topics to be discussed and voted on. The items, he noted, were much the same as those that had appeared on previous agendas. In part this was due to continuous situations and problems that called for discussion meeting after meeting. Sometimes, even after they had seemingly been resolved, and been voted on, they recurred in slightly different form, and would again be discussed in a succession of meetings. In large part, however, the same subjects appeared on agenda after agenda because the board never really got a chance to deal with them. The meetings started at ten in the morning and ended at noon, when the members were served an elaborate catered lunch.

Cyrus had inquired about it toward the end of the first year of his incumbency. “Seems to me,” he said to the member who sat beside him at the luncheon table, “that we have the same subjects on the agenda for each meeting, and most of them we don't ever get around to discussing.”

The other winked. “We're not really expected to, you know. None of us have the knowledge of what's involved. How could we, when we come down for a couple of hours four times a year? Take this Black Studies thing, for instance. We don't know what's involved in getting teachers, or students, for that matter. We have no idea of what money is involved and whether we can afford it or not. See, we don't set policy because we can't. That's what Prex is for.”

“You mean this is all a charade? We don't make policy? We just come and sit around for a couple of hours, are given lunch, and then go home so we can tell our friends we're involved in running an educational institution?”

“Is it any different in a large business corporation? Doesn't the chairman usually decide what he wants to do, and then doesn't the board go along with it? We don't make policy, but we do have a function. We act as a kind of brake.”

“A brake?”

“That's right. If Prex goes off his chump and gets some crazy notion in his head, we're here to tell him he can't do it. See, we don't tell him what to do; we just tell him what he can't do. Take last year when Prex wanted to change the name. Now that called for a two-thirds majority, so there was no trouble voting it down. Most things call for a plain majority, though, and it's not so easy vetoing them because this Macomber is a wily bird, and he's usually pretty sure he's got a majority before he brings it up for a vote.”

And now, several years later, the question of changing the name of the school was again on the agenda. And this time it was the first item listed. He wondered if that meant that Macomber thought he had a chance of getting it passed. Or was it his last desperate effort to get the matter settled one way or the other? He decided to see President Macomber.

The next day he made a point of driving into Boston. After lunch he drove to the college. Instead of waiting in the anteroom as he usually did, he asked the secretary to tell the president that he wanted to see him, and a few minutes later he was ushered into the office.

“I got the agenda for the Board of Trustees meeting yesterday, and I thought I'd drop by and see if I could be of any help to you on any of the items you're particularly interested in and want to be sure of passing.”

“Well, that's very kind of you, Cyrus. I can't think of anything at the moment. Over the last few months I've heard from various members of the board, and there seems to be pretty general agreement.”

“I notice the first item, the change of name, that calls for a two-thirds majority. Is there, er—general agreement on that?”

“Anything that calls for a two-thirds majority is an iffy thing. I put it in because one of the board members suggested we vote on it again.”

“That was Levine, I suppose, who made the suggestion, I mean.”

“No … I haven't spoken to Mark in some time. I think it was Raymond Oliver who suggested it. He came to see me because he was concerned about the course in Medieval History and the man who's giving it, a George Spenser, friend of his, I think, or a relative. The History Department put up his name for tenure. Know anything about it?”

“Spenser? No, Professor Sherwood hasn't given me the names of the History candidates yet. Actually, the names go to the dean and he passes them on to me as soon as he gets them.”

“How about the other departments?” Macomber said. “How about the English Department?”

“No, I haven't heard from Sugrue yet. Is there any urgency?”

“Not really. I won't be announcing the appointments until after the board meeting. Because sometimes the board approves an item that involves a sizable increase in our expenditure, and as a result the money involved in the salary increases that go with tenure just aren't there.”

As he left the president's office, Cyrus Merton tried to assess what he had learned, if anything, from the meeting. Macomber had said nothing about the name change, except that the chances were iffy. Did that mean that he thought he had the necessary votes, but wasn't sure? And then he had shifted the conversation to the matter of tenure. And he had asked specifically about the English Department. Why not the Math or the Physics or the Sociology departments? Was he, perhaps, hinting that if Merton wanted tenure for Victor Joyce, he'd better vote the right way on the change of name?

He would have liked to consult with other members of the board, but he had never become friendly with any of them. They were polite to him when they met at the quarterly meetings, but that was all. Most were from old New England families, and their money was old money. Their values were different, and so were their interests. And they were all college men, graduates of New England colleges, for the most part.