Thinking about Tempe and modern college students

One thing that I noticed in Tempe was that I don't think I have ever seen as many people being arrested at one time as I did on any given night there. I think that almost all of them were guys in baseball caps in their early 20's. The funny thing is that my reading material for the trip is a book about the culture of the Scholastic era (sorry, I do not have the book on me, so the exact title and author will have to wait). I had been reading of the problems that college students were creating back in the 13th century.

Part of the problem was that the students were by and large tonsured clerics. They were not necessarily ordained to Major orders, but had taken the tonsure, which gave them a high degree of immunity from the secular law. So there was this culture of maurading young men who had no intention of church life, but were nonetheless protected. They had to be remanded to church courts, which could strip them of their clerical status, but until then the secular authorities could not touch them.

I cannot imagine how bad town-gown relations would be if the fellows going to Hooters were immune from civic law.

The problem with today's college student is that he is the product of privillege. He is not immune from the law, but thinks he is or at least ought to be. We cannot think that the self-centeredness so often identified with the Boomers has stopped. The arrogant sense of entitlement that pervades the young people today is unbelievable. I heard on several occasions the arrested's friends saying to one another things like, "dude, he's gotta fight this. It's totally bogus."

I was not privvy to all conversations around all of the arrests I saw, but I heard snippets of several and not once did I hear the friends saying things like, "well, he was being a complete ass. I sure hope he learns this time."

More and more am I thinking that college students should have compulsory military service before entering college (not that that is the be-all/end-all that will bring discipline and order, but it is a step in the right direction). At least they can have a little humility drilled into them.

Some of us in the music program at UCSC were fortunate to have studied music theory under Prof. Anatole Leiken. Prof. Leiken was a bit of a drill sargeant who was not afraid of instilling a little fear and discipline into his class. It was one thing to make a mistake in counterpoint or chord analysis, but another to make said mistake out of laziness. Even worse was to pretend that the mistake was not a mistake but some exercise in creativity. Prof. Leiken had a look that he could give a student that instantly brought the student to order.

We certainly learned to avoid certain errors in counterpoint, and I think his influence had some effect on us outside of the music department as well. We could certainly put down the booze with the best of them, but we were not a group given to wanton vandalism and mischief. We certainly were not running afoul of the law.

I can only imagine the feeling of dread that one would have if one had to face Prof. Leiken when word had gotten around that one had been arrested for drunk and disorderly conduct.

Part of what made Prof. Leiken so credible is that he was from the USSR and had endured more than any of us. You simply did not want to act in a way that showed arrogance or culpable ignorance around him, because he could put you down with a look at best or a caustic remark that would haunt you forever. The great thing about him is that he always did this with remarkable humor.

I haven't seen him in years, but I know that he is still teaching, which gives me hope for the music department at a school that is trying hard to erase the things that made it stand out (in their vain and half-hearted attempt to be more like Berkeley, they are becoming more like Santa Barbara, which is a shame. But that is a different story).