Save Ferris, I Mean, the University of Chicago

Yet is she really in need of salvation, my alma mater? Some are beginning to think so. Between 1996 and 2008, it seems likely that the enrollment of the College will grow from about 3600 to 4800. At the moment, the growing enrollment of the College and the desire of the Housing Office to increase the percentage of enrolled students in Housing has forced University planners to start making some hard choices about selling dormitories, building dormitories, and figuring out where to put them.

The planning for new dormitories has become public. Other issues involving growing enrollment are less public. Anecdotal evidence suggests that there is a significant shortage of classroom space. Math classes have been moved to Pick and Judd. Core courses in general have been moving farther and farther from the center of the campus. For the sake of the students who take them, it might be best if classes in the Core be retained in the core, the Main Quad that is the pomerium of our scholarly city. Concentrators can stay in one or two nearby buildings on the edges of the campus, but those who take Core courses need not to rush from one side of the campus to another. Wide spacing of Core classrooms impairs reflection and it impairs discussion, as classes build in trickles of punctuality and unavoidable latenesses.

Worst of all, the quality of the College classes may have suffered from the efforts of the Office of Admissions to increase yield. The year my class entered, there was an imputation that most of my fellow classmates were Ivy League rejects. While it was technically true in my case, such nomenclature did not reflect that I had selected Chicago on its merits as my first choice. I came for the Core and generally have not regretted my choice. This summer, I realized that the kind of students who enter Ivy League institutions and those who I thought most fit the University of Chicago were vastly different. The general direction of a U of C student is a need to know. The general direction of an Ivy League student is a need to know X,Y,Z. As one might remember from the Republic, the love of knowledge itself makes one a philosopher. An unbridled and unmingled love for X,Y,Z simply makes one a conoissueur. This year, I have heard rumors that the Ivy League admissions pool and the generally anti-intellectual climate that often lies beneath those elder universities to the East has been admitted within these walls and occupies the purple and orange monster who sits to the north of Bartlett Quad. This state of affairs cannot stand.

Nor can the Faculty of the College afford to remain silent if all desire for knowledge itself is lacking in the matriculates. One professor was telling parents on the first day of Orientation that the Faculty had repudiated the reforms of Hugo Sonnenschein and wished to bring a greater "intensity" to the College. Yet a pool of Harvard rejects only will accept the rumored increasing vacuity of "faer Hahvahd."