I thought of the same question, Khaldoun. Be sure to read more detailed
accounts in the Chronicle and in the Chronicle's "Review" section...in
the latter she discusses all of the "ethical dilemmas" her research
posed for her.
Michael
Khaldoun Samman wrote:
Evan,
Thanks for that great reference! Sounds extremely
interesting. The only question I have is how in the
world did Nathan remake herself in such a way that she
became unrecognizable to other faculty? It must be a
very large institution indeed.
thanks,
Khaldoun
--- Evan Cooper <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
I thought folks might be interested in this.
Evan Cooper
http://villagevoice.com/arts/0531,education1,66450,12.html
In the fall of 2002, Rebekah Nathan, a 55-year-old
anthropology
professor looking to become more "crazy in a good
way," enrolled in her
own university. She moved into the dorms, hung a
cutesy message board
outside of her room, and chatted on Instant
Messenger, using plenty of
smileys. Soon after, she "got busted for drinking."
She hoped her
illicit can of beer would win over the other
students on the floor, who
appreciated her friendliness (she joined in on all
hallway events,
including games of Twister and meetings about
protected sex) and also
found it a little pathetic.
"You look like their mother in the beginning," she
told the Voice, "but
you don't act like their mother. There were a series
of 'mom incidents'
[everyone immediately assumed she was the loving
parent of whomever she
was standing next to], but eventually they began
treating me like a
peer."
Nathan went back to school, after more than 15 years
of teaching,
because she no longer understood her students. They
never did their
reading and when they came to class, they slept or
played with their
cell phones; "I was on the verge of being offended,"
she said. In My
Freshman Year (out this month from Cornell
University Press), a series
of essays about her two semesters as an undergrad,
she never reveals
the name of the university ("Rebekah Nathan" is also
a pseudonym), but
describes it as both a big state school and—in a
more academic
moment—"a remote overseas village." She takes
"censuses" of all the
flyers in the hallways, scrupulously writing down
mundane messages like
"Good luck with classes!" or "Come on in." No one
ever asked her what
she was doing. According to rumor, she was hiding
from a traumatic
divorce.
For all the drama of going undercover, though,
Nathan's revelations are
relatively predictable, confirming—scientifically—a
rush of college
stereotypes. After delving into the art of door
decorations, she
impressively outlines seven "genres" of photos. In
each image, students
carefully arrange themselves into positions that
will convey something
like "Here I am being fun and spontaneous!" They
stick out their
tongues or butts, or point at each other, mouths
open, in mock
surprise. In one particularly popular pose (type no.
6), a mixed-gender
group lies on the ground, each person's head resting
on the next
person's stomach. The shot is taken from above.
Everyone is laughing.
Accompanying the photos are strings of words and
phrases, cut from
magazines, which round out the image of this
perfectly irreverent dorm
resident: "Friends don't let friends party naked;
Bitch; 24 Hours in a
Day. 24 cans of beer in a case. Coincidence? I think
Not. Z-man!!"
Nathan said she never overheard a conversation about
the actual content
of a course, only whispered questions like "When is
the paper due?" or
"What is the font size?" During her second semester,
she went around
campus asking people if there was "any course you
think I shouldn't
miss." After getting the same response from almost
every student, she
took their suggestions and enrolled in a class
called "Sexuality." When
the teacher walked in and immediately began using
the word
fucking, the 19-year-old next to her whispered,
"This guy is so cool!"
Michael Moffatt, an anthropology professor at
Rutgers who spent four
semesters living in the college dorms in the '70s
and '80s, found
students similarly disposed toward "friendly fun,"
as he puts it. While
Nathan spent all her time on campus, Moffatt dipped
in just one night a
week, carefully graphing—with triangles, squares,
and dotted lines—the
evolution of friendships down the hall. He
interviewed more than 200
students, and eavesdropped on their late-night
conversations by
pretending to fall asleep in the common lounge. One
roommate accused
him of being a "returned Vietnam Vet infiltrating
the system." The
title of his 1989 book about the experience, Coming
of Age in New
Jersey (a play on Margaret Mead's Coming of Age in
Samoa), situates his
research process within a familiar framework.
Carefully keeping his
polysyllables under control, he deconstructs the
culture, dividing
students into romantic categories like
"Neanderthals," "Sluts," and
"Good Women."
Although the focus is less sexual, Nathan and her
"remote village" rely
on similar metaphors. When she told other faculty
members about the
project, they thought she was "on the verge of
crazy." Three colleagues
individually came up to her and said the idea
reminded them of Black
Like Me, the 1961 bestseller by John Howard Griffin,
a white writer who
dyed his skin and then traveled throughout the
South. "Likening my
projected freshman experience to changing one's
racial identity in the
1950s," she writes, "said volumes about the
psychological distance
educators perceive between their world and that of
their students." She
altered her appearance in just a couple of minor
ways, but the few
times she ran into colleagues on campus, they didn't
recognize her: She
was wearing shorts, flip-flops, and a backpack.
Even in classes, she had no trouble hiding her
identity—she was a
dismayingly solid-B student and resented when
professors assigned
things just for the sake of an "interesting read."
In engineering, she
was the worst one in the room. "I asked stupid
questions. People would
look at me. I had to go to the tutoring center."
With a much better sense of what it means to "suck
at a class," Nathan
said she wishes other professors would at least be
more curious about
the people they're teaching. All the spectacular
quotes that the RAs
affixed to dorm walls ("The world is but a canvas to
the imagination";
"It takes two to speak truth—one to speak, and
another to hear") were a
little absurd, given the displays outside of kids'
rooms— bosomy girls
in bathing suits, holding forties. Understanding the
enormous gap
between student and faculty values has prompted
Nathan to be more
inventive about the way she presents things in
class. "I would have
preferred less noise, drama, throwing up, but it
made me a better
professor," she says. "If kids have to sleep through
lectures, I
understand. At this point, it'd be pretty hard for
me to feel
alienated."
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