Fritz Efaw (bless his anarchist heart) refers, rightly, to the "right-wing
petit-bourgeois thinking that pervades academia." But good grief, hasn't
academia become (always been, with only occasional, rare, brief exceptions)
a pale mirror for the culture(s)-at-large? Radical, reform-minded
individual and collective thinking and action have fallen so far off the
radar that a politics of liberalism (no more than open-minded,
non-confrontational, laissez-faire consumerism) appears far left relative
to the fundamentalist right. Consider the life of Phillip Berrigan, who
died this past week, for a study in contrast.

Re: la biblioteca, it cd be that we have formulated no collective will, as
Richard Metzger has so thoughtfully pointed out, not only because we
haven't made use of opportunities, but also because we ain't got one. (And
if we do have one, submerged under the thick waters of institutional ennui
and personal preoccupations, how wd we ever know it?) We work at a
university consistently denied its full allocation of state funding, though
the local newspaper article announcing the blending of UC into UT some 30
yrs ago (ironically on display on the second floor of same library!)
assured local Chattanooga folks, anxious about that specific possibility,
that UTC wd receive an allowance per student equal to the other members of
its new family. And here we are, 30+ yrs later. As Kurt Vonnegut might say,
"So it goes. . . ."

It's hard to imagine at this moment any consequence other than frustration
and hurt, but I'll join a collective group of faculty and academic
administrators to see if we can hammer together a set of "local priorities"
(Richard's phrase). In fact, I'll host the first meeting. Somebody pick a
date.


David Garrison
Professor and Head
Department of English (2703)
University of Tennessee at Chattanooga
615 McCallie Ave
Chattanooga, TN 37403
423 425 4238
423 425 2282 (fax)
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