When Students, Faculty Don’t Break Bread, Intellectualism Fails

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Author: Jack McHenry

If one listens closely, there are stories of a bygone age at Occidental College when teachers and students mingled freely in the quad and in the Marketplace, competed in recreational sports together on the weekends and even socialized in settings outside of school.

While today such camaraderie would violate the stiff, professional relationship that at present exists between professors and students, and may create liability issues for the college, we should be aware that these kinds of activities used to be the norm on campus. While interactions like these still occur in the context of office hours, small class sizes and professors who advise student organizations, it is with less frequency and less vigor than the relationships of the past.

In terms of the academic community here at Occidental, this lack of social relationships between professors and students affects the nature of intellectualism at school. While students are as intelligent as ever, oftentimes it seems that their focus is on an individualized, accomplishment-based criteria in which internships and resume building is more important than deeply engaging people and ideas. Additionally, with the advent of social media, communication in the form of in-person conversations that can be fertile soil for intellectual discovery are becoming few and far between.

For centuries the student-teacher relationship was the backbone of intellectual and academic culture. From the Greeks of antiquity to the twentieth century systems of English higher education, the relationship between teachers and students developed in seminars and casual social discussion as well as more formalized educational settings. This complete, multi-faceted educational system was deemed necessary for a student’s education. It was understood that learning in the classroom had to be supplemented with informal conversations in social settings. And just as the informal side of education was critical in times past, its absence is now a critical gap in intellectual culture.

The dry relationship between professors and students at Occidental now lacks a mutual engagement that would otherwise be present if students and teachers engaged socially more often. A student would be more likely to work hard for a teacher they respected as a friend, because to not give one’s all academically would amount to letting down a friend, not just a professional acquaintance. Conversely, a professor benefits from having a personal understanding with a student because they can then relate concepts to that student in the clearest terms the student can understand. These relationships would create a social and collaborative intellectualism that thrived on engagement between students, as well as between students and professors, in less formal settings that still maintained their intellectual rigor. The potential for intellectual discovery and exploration is just as high while discussing a topic over a couple pints on a Friday evening as it is sitting at a desk on Monday morning.

The reasons for the decline of social intellectualism, particularly between professors and students, are varied and can be difficult to pinpoint. One factor that is easy to identify, however, is the role that liability and litigation plays in our society. With the chances for the school and professors having to deal with serious legal consequences if any kind of foul play with students in a social setting occurs, the college has developed protocols to prevent many types of personal interactions. On campus, there are rules in place that state a door must always be open during interactions between students and professors, like during office hours. Even where protocols do not exist, professors remain cautious because of the potential for facing backlash.

Legal repercussions are not the only reason for the decline in these sort of intellectual relationships. Students have seemed to adopt a sense of an individualized, atomized, instrumental approach to education, where the experiences they have in school are seen more as resources, as means to an end, than for the sheer love of learning.  This has been instilled in them since a young age, and often has them more concerned with things like a high GPA and finding the right internships and volunteer work to round out a resume, rather than enjoying academia as a social lifestyle. This is not the absolute truth for all people at Occidental, and compared with many other colleges and universities, it is hard to imagine Occidental’s intimacy being matched. However, looking at Occidental as an individual case, this culture has undeniably declined over the years.

In the future, students and professors must look to each other to manifest and enjoy intellectual exploration as more of a lifestyle and a social activity than something that only occurs for three hours a week in Johnson or Fowler. Being an intellectual and an academic has changed in the twenty-first century. As everyday social relationships are diluted by social media and an overriding push for career and resume building, so intellectualism has been diluted as well.

Intellectualism cannot be written down on a resume, it will not impress most employers, and it cannot be exercised merely by sitting in lectures all week. It is a lifestyle that must be enriched through real relationships among students and professors and must go beyond the classroom and into more informal, social settings where intellectual rigor still flows into everyday conversation. When these aspects are built into one’s life, then a higher level of knowledge, and a genuine appreciation for that knowledge, can be obtained.

Jack McHenry is a senior DWA major. He can be reached at jmchenry@oxy.edu.

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