by Aaron Thier
“This can be a stressful time for parents and new students alike,” I said. “I wonder if the move-in process could be improved or streamlined in any way?”
“A beefalo is just what it is,” Burke said. “It’s its own thing, like a squid or a periscope.”
I pressed on. “What are the three things you would change about move-in or about Tripoli College orientation activities?”
This got Lehman’s attention. “I’ve had some trouble with the RA,” he said.
As far as I could tell from his confused account, the residential adviser had made a disparaging comment about the New York Knicks. There was no indication that this remark had been disrespectful or mean-spirited. The problem was only that Lehman, to use the old phrase, couldn’t take a joke. I tried to explain that the RA must have simply misjudged the degree of Lehman’s devotion to the New York Knicks franchise, but Lehman only rolled his eyes.
“What about you, Burke? What are three things you’d change?”
I had already seen that Burke was less self-possessed than Lehman, who hails from New York City, and I could tell that he wasn’t having such an easy time with the transition to college life.
“It seems like all they serve in the dining hall is pudding,” he said. “Also I don’t know where to get my schedule signed. The third thing is that coming here was a mistake.”
I reassured him, as I had reassured so many students over the years. “You’ll discuss your schedule with your adviser, and I’m sure he or she will contact you soon. You’re going to do great here, Burke. We all are. Tripoli’s self-serve pudding bars are famous.”
I told him that everything would get easier as he grew more familiar with the rhythm of life here at Tripoli College. I also encouraged him to get involved in one or more of the 200+ student organizations on campus, one of which might turn out to be his consuming passion. Then I reminded him that the counseling center was a great resource that many students took advantage of at least once in their four years at Tripoli.
Lehman was drinking from a bottle of white rum. He said, “You want a nip, Grandpa?”
I wanted more than a nip: I wanted the inside story on the drinking habits of our students. But I’d have to leave it for another time. I needed to catch up on some sleep!
Reflections
Over the last few days, I’ve settled into my new life. On a personal level, I feel better already. It’s great just to get out of my empty house! Of course, as a seventy-year-old man trying to keep up with young men and women in their teens and early twenties, I do face some challenges. My days are so full that I hardly have time to think, and I feel as if I’m always rushing, whether I’m eating an early breakfast at Pinkman Hall, walking to class in the chill of the morning, hitting the books, attending dramatic performances, surfing the net, or just talking about sports and metaphysics with my suitemates in the common room.
My fellow students have been very welcoming. I’ve started to feel like I’m the only one who cares about my age, so I’ve given up my disguise and started dressing more casually. Most days I just wear my old loafers, a pair of chinos, and a very old tweed sport coat over a T-shirt. That way, if students I know see me out on campus, they’ll just think I’m taking a stroll in my capacity as dean. Burke thinks I look great, incidentally, and he tells me I’m fitting in better than he is.
As I relive all the trials and tribulations of selecting classes (exclusively freshman seminars, so I won’t risk being recognized by an upperclassman), getting to know my suitemates, and familiarizing myself with the routines of student life, I’ve been thinking about my first experience as a student at Tripoli College, fifty years ago. A lot has changed—Tripoli is now coed, we offer a greater variety of courses in a greater variety of subjects, our student body is diverse and technologically savvy in a way that my generation would have found hard to believe—but a lot has also remained the same. The anxieties, fears, and frustrations are different in substance but the same in essence. Who am I? we ask ourselves. What do I want? What am I interested in?
And whatever the answers are, they’re bound to be exciting.
From: “Maggie Bell”
To: “Chris Bell”
Date: September 6, 2009, at 2:06 AM
Subject: (no subject)
Chris!
Somebody asked me yesterday what it’s like to have a twin brother, and I told her, “Well, you know, I don’t know what it’s like not to have a twin brother.”
How are things at NYU? It’s hot as hell here. I’m glad to hear everything’s good with Max. I know reunions can be weird. What’s it been for you guys, like a year and a half? I wish you could tell just Mom, too, but you know she would tell Dad right away. Whenever you feel like you’re ready, that’s the right time. They’ll be able to handle it.
I finally got moved into my new dorm. It’s all right (I’ve got a single and AC and a beautiful view of the loading dock and dumpsters behind the post office) but now I’m with these three girls I don’t know at all. You know how there’s that fourth person sometimes in a room with three friends? Now it’s me. I probably should’ve just roomed with Becca again, but we were fighting so much, which I realize I didn’t tell you anything about, but it’s only that it wasn’t real fighting, it was just mutual irritation, like who got toothpaste on the toilet seat and you left this hard-boiled egg to rot in the fridge and are you peeing a ton in the shower because it’s turning yellow. Now Becca’s in a suite with Liz and Francoise and I’m in my bedroom with the door closed while these three turnips are out there hanging pink feather boas on the walls. I mean, it’s OK, really. They aren’t bad people, and we’re on different schedules, and I’m excited about my classes, but you know how it is—one of them is in the choir and I mentioned I sang choir in high school and then they asked if I liked Rihanna, if I could “like, sing, like, just a little bit” for them, and I felt pretty suspicious of that. They all seem to have the same name. Chloe? They’re all named Chloe.
Anyway. Ugh. I don’t know what’s the matter with me. I feel more and more closed off and depressed. And I’m worried I’m getting fat. I just want to be slim and well dressed so that everyone knows I’m just like all the other privileged upper-middle-class morons. One time last year, I never told you this, but one time I had to do my laundry across the quad and I was going to change it and I forgot my key. So then there I was in my laundry-day clothes, dirty and wrinkled, and nobody would let me in! They thought I was, like, some crazy person off the street trying to steal their clothes! So now I just want to activate as few prejudices as possible. I don’t want anyone imagining that I overcame terrible odds and struggled and worked hard and got myself out of the ghetto and into Tripoli, either. If I’d worked hard and struggled, I’d be at fucking Wesleyan or something.
But classes are great, yeah. Whatever other problems I’m having, I do feel more committed to school. I’m taking this class on Atlantic history where we read slave narratives. It’s brutal but I’ve decided I have to face it. This week we’re reading the Narrative of the Life of Henry Box Brown. This man, a slave in Virginia, mailed himself to freedom in a wooden crate! The professor is this super-impressive guy from St. Renard, Professor John Kabaka, who looks sort of like Peter Tosh. Extremely handsome and commanding. He’s got one of those cheerful Anglo-Caribbean accents, which seems very much at odds with his burn-the-cane-fields-and-hang-the-overseer way of talking, but I guess that’s the paradox of reggae. Island rhythm and island anger! Maybe that’s why people like it? Anyway, there’s something mesmerizing about Professor Kabaka. He could talk the husk off a coconut. I feel like I’d do anything he told me to do.
That’s got to be it. Say hi to Max for me.
XOXO,
M
From
The Tripoli College Telegraph
September 8, 2009
Poor Tripoli!
This Wednesday, President Richmond announced that the value of
Tripoli’s endowment has fallen by as much as 35 percent this year, a result of the global economic crisis.
“These are trying times for all of us,” she explained. “We’re all going to have to tighten our belts.”
Asked when we could expect the endowment to return to pre-crash levels, Provost Alexander Kosta said, “Certainly not in the foreseeable future. This is the reality now.”
After the crash last year, the president instituted a hiring freeze, a decrease in the operating budget, and a suspension of merit raises. These measures remain in effect, with layoffs and additional cuts to come.
But after almost a year, many students, and even some professors, are scratching their heads.
“Wasn’t all the money imaginary to begin with?” said Jerry Black ’12, articulating a misconception shared by many. “Why would it be so bad to lose it?”
“It’s going to be difficult for a lot of people to understand,” said the provost. “The world of high finance is complex, nuanced, and abstract. Many of our investments were derivatives three and four times removed from the assets to which their value was linked.”
Many, but not all. Tripoli lost nearly $500,000 on its investment in Consolidated Paper Products, one of the companies that prints the toy money used in the board game Monopoly.
“Just before the economy collapsed,” said Professor David Monahan of the Economics Department, “Tripoli was literally printing Monopoly money.”
The provost acknowledged the mistake: “We just did not fully understand how many young people are playing Monopoly on mobile wireless devices, computers, etc. The board game itself turns out to be much less popular than we thought.”
Some members of the community have dismissed the current crisis as just one of the many periodic adjustments inherent in the “boom and bust” cycle of capitalism. But there is reason to believe that it may have more lasting effects.
In order to overcome a potentially disastrous budget shortfall, the college has had to seek support from for-profit corporations. Administrators and trustees are now in the final stage of negotiations with the multi-national food and food services corporation Big Anna® Brands. Tripoli already has a number of formal and informal relationships with the snack food giant, notably a shared interest in the island of St. Renard and a technology transfer agreement with Big Anna® subsidiary Genutrex®. It is expected that the new partnership will solemnize and extend these existing relationships, although the terms and conditions of the agreement have not yet been made public.
From
English Department Course Listings
Fall 2009
ENGL 110a / Freshman Seminar: An Introduction to Disputation
(multiple sections)
Argument, whether constructive or acrimonious, is an essential part of any collective enterprise, and learning how to express a considered opinion in writing is critical to your success at Tripoli. We are not going to entertain the notion that real consensus is ever possible, but we may discover that some of our convictions overlap in ways that strike us as mutually acceptable. Readings will vary across sections but will likely include Professor Beckford’s memoir, Inactivity Is Death, and passages from Jeremiads, a volume of his occasional writings. Some sections will discuss the Tripoli Summer Reading Program selection, Tan as Fuck: A Surfer’s Tragedy, the authorship of which is unknown.
ENGL 215 / Introspection and Atonement
Anonymous
Each student will perform a searching and pained examination of his or her own conscience. The results of this examination will be private and may not be recorded, especially not in the form of weekly response papers. Readings will include selections from Professor Carlyle’s poetry, with special emphasis on his postmodern epic, Frangible Me: A Problem in Hexameters.
ENGL 300 / Imaginative Writing: Poetry
Carlyle
The essential elements of our poetry will be courage, audacity, and revolt. Literature has up to now magnified pensive immobility, ecstasy, and slumber. We want to exalt movements of aggression, feverish sleeplessness, the double march, the perilous leap, the slap, and the blow with the fist. The poet must spend himself with warmth, glamour, and prodigality to increase the enthusiastic fervor of the primordial elements. We are on the extreme promontory of the centuries! What is the use of looking behind at the moment when we must open the mysterious shutters of the impossible? Time and Space died yesterday. We are already living in the absolute. We want to glorify war—the only cure for the world—militarism, patriotism, the destructive gesture of the anarchists, the beautiful ideas which kill.
ENGL 367 / The Phenomenology of Feeling: Taking Stock, Taking Action
(multiple sections)
Are you feeling down? Do you have persistent neck pain? Doesn’t Russian roulette seem like a reasonable pastime? If everyone else were jumping off a bridge, wouldn’t you just shoot yourself instead? If you answered yes to any of these questions, you may be eligible to participate in a clinical trial that could help to relieve you of some of your most aggravating symptoms. We’re looking for nonsmokers between the ages of eighteen and twenty-two, with no history of yaws or high cholesterol, to help us test a nutritional supplement and mood additive derived from the Carawak Apple tree of St. Renard, a tree long prized for its effects by the indigenous people of that island. For inclusion/exclusion and reimbursement information, contact GENUTREX® nutrition at [email protected] and include your name, student ID number, and undergraduate major (if known).
Letter from
Israel Framingham Tripoli
to
Zephaniah Fitch
September 24, 1788
Dear Sir,
I have received your letter of the 18th. I am very grateful to you, not least for your cheerful acquiescence as for your understanding. As to your question, I would have our Professors give to these Indian Scholiasts instruction in every branch of learning, excepting only Moral Philosophy, which I do not hold a true science, preferring rather to imagine that a sense of right and wrong, though present in every man, be he Indian or White, to a greater or lesser extent, is present nevertheless from birth, & tends only to become vitiated by artificial ideas.
You ask me to give an account of the island of Saint Reynard, which I will do without disguise, tho fearful of offending against Your Honor’s good nature. I was the guest of a Mr. Sturge, whose cousin I knew at Boston, and stayed with him in the town of San Christobal for the whole period of my residence there, excepting only a brief journey to his plantation in the county of Binghamshire. The aspect of this town is very bad. Every second edifice, as it seems to me, is a house of negotiable affection. The streets, which are of white sand, are bestrewn with Ordure, and abound with Brigands and Carbuncled Scoundrels of the worst description. I saw a man Killed in the squalid piazza, not ten paces from where I strolled, for no crime other than that of standing where another wished to pass. The planters are no better than the transported criminals, and some are worse, for if they are not indolent, chicaning, and voluptuary, then they are Bedlamites. Their government is a burlesque, their rhetoric and conduct at perpetual handicuffs, and the only law they cherish is that of Profit, tho all in all I think it is not the very great wealth to be obtained from the Sugar cane that renders the island insusceptible of civilization, but the Mortality of the place, by which a man waking in the full strength of his youth may find himself wasted and hollow-eyed at the sun’s meridian, and dead at its final decline.
Every man will speak of the fair as his own market has gone in it, & perhaps I judge the island too harshly, for I was much incommoded by the heat, which frustrates the operation of the animal economy and makes walking impossible in the noon-day, with the result that between the heat of the daylight hours, & at night the Unbearable Torment of those teasing trumpeters the moskitos, a man verily becomes a Prisoner in his smoky oven of a chamber. Do not think that the prisoner’s couch may be his asylum, for sleep is a comfort to be sought fruitlessly, night
after night, as one seeks a fabular creature, or the knowledge of God’s inscrutable will. If the moskitos are not molestation enough, one is startled at the first sweet presage of repose by the most discordant piercing yells & shoutings from the street below. An old man is thus thrown upon his recollections of better times, and I thought, my Friend, long and longingly of those palmy days at New Haven, when we were young.
Of the natural world I can speak more kindly, for there is an incredible variety of luxuriant vegetation, including a great many extraordinary fruits, tho I did not sample the ill-famed Carrawak- or Ghost-Apple, which my Grandfather remembered with such a peculiar compound of fear and fascination. Most remarkable to me was the Ficus tree, which overspreads an acre or more, and lowers columnar roots to secure itself the more firmly in the island’s impoverished soil. But this mention of the soil prompts me to relate an astonishing occurrence, viz. that last year, when the canes were ripe and the Negroes preparing for the harvest, there was a tempest, causing heavy rain, in consequence of which a full three acres of Sugar cane, which stood upon the plantation of a Mr. Howth, became somehow detached from the earth, or perhaps came to float upon it as butter floats upon milk, and the whole field then slid a distance of one mile down Trowbridge Hill and came to rest in a fallow field belonging to a Mr. Price. Seeing that the cane was not one cherry stone the worse for its journey, Mr. Price thereafter maintained that it was his to harvest and process, being now upon his own acreage. Mr. Howth pled his own case just as fervently, & because the dispute could not be adjudicated in a timely fashion, there being no precedent, the cane was left to rot.
Of the plantation which I visited myself, I am of divided mind. Surely it was very beautiful, the new cane being green and vigorous in the rains, and the plantation house splendid, & surely it was a pleasure to see the Negroes working in the fields, for they are a marvel of cheer and natural gentility, but one pities them terribly, knowing that their labor is forced, and seeing how Brutally they are punished for the smallest infraction. I could have wept to see their miserable huts, which are almost as bad as Irish cabins, and indeed sometimes just as bad.
