February 17, 2007--Saturday Story: Found On Staten Island--Part One
In “What Does Happiness Have to Do With Anything?”, Lloyd took us back in time to help us understand why it had been so difficult for him to find happiness. Actually, as he reminded us, to pursue it. He recalled for us about how each side of his family brought with them from the Old Country a gloomy sense of pessimism that they perhaps genetically, or more likely via example, passed along to their children—especially to Lloyd himself, his father’s Number-One Son. As “Happiness?” ends, Lloyd broadly hints that the remainder of what he will be recounting will be about his efforts to overcome both what nature and nurture instilled in him while pursuing at least a modicum of, yes, happiness.
So in Found On Staten Island, Lloyd tells us that . . .
After having been sent packing as the result of the coup at Queens College, I surprisingly found myself--rather, now in the active voice—I found another assignment almost immediately. Via and unorthodoxy and indirect route, I was hired to serve as the Assistant Dean of Community and Continuing Education at a community college on Staten Island. Though it might appear that the dean’s title was evidence of professional progress, becoming an assistant dean at a junior college was in the world of the university could understandable be seen as a step backwards.
There were, however, some compensations—importantly, I had a job and a salary. And, I was pleased to discover that two-year colleges of this kind were mostly populated by young people and adults from working-class families, which would allow me to apply my administrative skills, as I had so abortedly attempted to do in the Collegiate Opportunity Program, to a student population also seeking cultural and social mobility. So there was ample opportunity on Staten Island, as there had been in Queens, to contribute to social change. The Larger Revolution was for me, though, put on indefinite hold. Rather, in the active voice again—I placed that Revolution on the back burner and embraced the revisionist idea that individual change needs to precede social change. For the students this certainly had to be true, I rationalized; and, who knew, maybe it would be for me as well.
I heard about Staten Island Community College, SICC (smart-ass students pronounced this acronym SICK), from a Queens College colleague—Harvey Weiner, a sociologist from the “regular” faculty who had supported the COP Program sit-in and all of the non-negotiable demands, including the one that would have required the student cafeteria to serve Soul Food. Actually, from Harvey I learned about SICC’s president, William Birenberg who had written a book he recommended, The University In the City. As a self-described radical sociologist, Weiner studied the “political economy” of education—the relationship between who, via taxes, paid for public education and who benefited. Through his research he claimed that he found that public schooling did not live up to its egalitarian rhetoric. When he looked at the data to see how well schools functioned in fostering meritocracy, he discovered, and proclaimed to those who would listen, that the opportunities schools provided benefited primarily those from privileged backgrounds. In a word, public schools were not the engines of democracy many claimed them to be, but rather they helped reproduce the advantages of affluence and the disadvantages of poverty and race. Lower-income people in the aggregate, Weiner argued, paid a disproportionately higher percentage of taxes which were then used to provide more years of higher quality education to the children of the “rich.” Since Harvey saw COP to be a radical alternative to this “rigged system,” his phrase, he befriended the program and me.
Thus, he passed along Birenberg’s book, which he urged me to read while I was adrift and looking for employment, feeling that it, in spite of my disappointment and sense of having been treated unfairly, would help keep me focused on “the on-going struggle.” In addition, Harvey wished me well, though he was not reluctant to add, looking me square in he eye, that he “fully supported” my firing, seeing my summary dismissal as just another example of “collateral damage,” again his phrase, which was one of the inevitable consequences to be expected on the long march toward revolutionary change. Which for him, unlike me, was decidedly not on hold. He had both the data and bumper stickers to prove it.
In fact, the book was just what I needed to inspire and distract me. I was so taken by Birenberg’s central thesis that when I finished it I shot off to him a gushing letter in which I said things such as: “Your powerful and, may I say, energetically written case in support of the idea that the university must be more than in the city but of the city and that it has social responsibilities, especially to the poor and disenfranchised, is brilliant and spoke directly to me in my role as an administrator of a special program at Queens College that is doing this very thing. [I did not see it to be necessary to refer to myself as an unemployed former administrator—I was so enthusiastic about his ideas that I felt the need to write to him as a version of a colleague.] . . . Though up to this point I have not thought as I much as I should have about how the setting and physical arrangement of the typical university communicates and encourages exclusivity, and that to become socially engaged with the community it needs to be radically redesigned, Queens College high up on its isolated hill is certainly such an example. The again brilliance of your critique is more than just spot on; your book, unlike others of a revisionist kind, also charts a path forward for those of us involved in leadership positions in higher education. You provide the inspiration as well as the agenda for engagement as we struggle to reform the university and thereby transform it into the kind of responsive institution requires.”
My letter ran on in this vane until I had typed four single-spaced pages on Queens College stationary; and even though it was 2:00 a.m., I was so excited by Birenberg’s book and my letter, that I pulled a pair of pants on over my pajamas and raced out to mail it. I was that enthusiastic. I also hoped that he would like what I wrote about the book and him and thus might be willing to help me find a job somewhere. Anywhere.
But I heard nothing back; and thoughts about SICC, The University in the City, and any remaining enthusiasm for social engagement generated from the book and my time at Queens College rapidly receded. I was beginning to feel desperate about my own much more personal lack of engagement. To the point that, in addition to sending résumés to colleges and universities in an ever-widening geographic circle, including one all the way out to Ohio State University, and hearing nothing back except, “We will keep your vitae in our files in case an appropriate position becomes available. But in the meantime, please do not call us because we receive literally hundreds of applications of this kind each month,” out of frustration, desperation, and self-doubt, I began to think about what other careers I might pursue. Equally important, as I saw the balance in my checking account shrinking, I considered other ways to make a living. Perhaps, I thought, with a publisher or at an advertising agency—I had after all been an English major and though I had not been able to publish very much of my own work I still thought of myself as well-read and at least a decent writer. That should qualify me.
Who knew, maybe I might have the ability to write advertising copy. What, in truth, was so difficult about coming up with slogans as for Coca Cola—It’s the Real Thing, or Quality is Job One for the Ford Motor Company, whatever that means. Really. I could do that. It certainly paid a lot better than university teaching or administration. To test myself I even tried to come up with some tag lines of my own. But, thankfully, before I got too far into that, and in truth because it turned out not to be as easy as it seemed (my best line was for St. Pauli’s Girl—The Queen Of Beers, so you can see what I mean), I got a call from Birenberg’s assistant who told me that he liked my letter and would I be available to meet with him later in the week so we could talk about it. I wasn’t sure if it meant the book or my letter, much less if I might be able to talk honestly with him about my own circumstances; but to be able to talk with anyone, much less a president, much less the author of that book, on an actual university campus nearer to New York than Columbus, Ohio, and not to be needing to buy a new wardrobe for Madison Avenue, though I pretended to Birenberg’s assistant that I was “all tied up” through Thursday and though she said he was available on just Wednesday, I said “no problem, just tell me when to be there.” She said come at 3:00 and I again said “no problem.”
In my best corduroys and my old English Department tweed jacket with the leather patches on the sleeves, at noon on Wednesday I made my way across the Verrazano Bridge to Staten Island. I wasn’t comfortable with the directions—I had only been on Staten Island when driving across it as quickly as possible on the way to South Jersey or Philadelphia—and so I wanted to give myself enough time to find my way to his office. But I also wanted to take in and understand how Birenberg’s college related, including physically, to its community since he had written so extensively about that and had included many pages of glossy illustrations to make his point. I was thus eager to become familiar with his campus and its surroundings so that I would be able to talk knowingly with him about this essential aspect of his thinking.
But as I found my way there, it was immediately evident that Birenberg’s college appeared to be the very kind of place he most criticized in his book. It was even more set apart from its community, in spite of being a community college, than Queens College.
SICC sat isolated in a wooded valley between two soaring hills, Todt and Grimes, which were sites for the island’s most exclusive and valuable real estate. In fact, most of New York’s leading Mafia families had their faux-Tudor and Mansard-roofed mansions perched in enclaves on those hills, reputed to be the highest right along the east coast south of Maine. Indeed, I later learned that the wedding scene in The Godfather had been shot in one of those mansions not more than a quarter of a mile up the road from Birenberg’s campus—they had even used classrooms at the college to dress and make up the actors.
And when I drove through the security gate, where I was required to show my drivers license before I was allowed to enter, I found the campus to be more a series of nondescript buildings surrounded entirely by parking lots than anything illustrated in The Univeristy In the City. It was hard to imagine anything about Todt Hill resembling Birenberg’s city. It was even more difficult to think about what I saw through the hurricane fencing that completely encircled the campus as of the community much less in it. Queens College, by comparison, felt like the Sorbonne.
From this I knew the conversation that awaited me was going to be more complicated than I had been imagining. But I needed a job—anyone, anywhere—and whatever Birenberg might say or offer to do was going to be fine with me.
To be continued . . .
So in Found On Staten Island, Lloyd tells us that . . .
After having been sent packing as the result of the coup at Queens College, I surprisingly found myself--rather, now in the active voice—I found another assignment almost immediately. Via and unorthodoxy and indirect route, I was hired to serve as the Assistant Dean of Community and Continuing Education at a community college on Staten Island. Though it might appear that the dean’s title was evidence of professional progress, becoming an assistant dean at a junior college was in the world of the university could understandable be seen as a step backwards.
There were, however, some compensations—importantly, I had a job and a salary. And, I was pleased to discover that two-year colleges of this kind were mostly populated by young people and adults from working-class families, which would allow me to apply my administrative skills, as I had so abortedly attempted to do in the Collegiate Opportunity Program, to a student population also seeking cultural and social mobility. So there was ample opportunity on Staten Island, as there had been in Queens, to contribute to social change. The Larger Revolution was for me, though, put on indefinite hold. Rather, in the active voice again—I placed that Revolution on the back burner and embraced the revisionist idea that individual change needs to precede social change. For the students this certainly had to be true, I rationalized; and, who knew, maybe it would be for me as well.
I heard about Staten Island Community College, SICC (smart-ass students pronounced this acronym SICK), from a Queens College colleague—Harvey Weiner, a sociologist from the “regular” faculty who had supported the COP Program sit-in and all of the non-negotiable demands, including the one that would have required the student cafeteria to serve Soul Food. Actually, from Harvey I learned about SICC’s president, William Birenberg who had written a book he recommended, The University In the City. As a self-described radical sociologist, Weiner studied the “political economy” of education—the relationship between who, via taxes, paid for public education and who benefited. Through his research he claimed that he found that public schooling did not live up to its egalitarian rhetoric. When he looked at the data to see how well schools functioned in fostering meritocracy, he discovered, and proclaimed to those who would listen, that the opportunities schools provided benefited primarily those from privileged backgrounds. In a word, public schools were not the engines of democracy many claimed them to be, but rather they helped reproduce the advantages of affluence and the disadvantages of poverty and race. Lower-income people in the aggregate, Weiner argued, paid a disproportionately higher percentage of taxes which were then used to provide more years of higher quality education to the children of the “rich.” Since Harvey saw COP to be a radical alternative to this “rigged system,” his phrase, he befriended the program and me.
Thus, he passed along Birenberg’s book, which he urged me to read while I was adrift and looking for employment, feeling that it, in spite of my disappointment and sense of having been treated unfairly, would help keep me focused on “the on-going struggle.” In addition, Harvey wished me well, though he was not reluctant to add, looking me square in he eye, that he “fully supported” my firing, seeing my summary dismissal as just another example of “collateral damage,” again his phrase, which was one of the inevitable consequences to be expected on the long march toward revolutionary change. Which for him, unlike me, was decidedly not on hold. He had both the data and bumper stickers to prove it.
In fact, the book was just what I needed to inspire and distract me. I was so taken by Birenberg’s central thesis that when I finished it I shot off to him a gushing letter in which I said things such as: “Your powerful and, may I say, energetically written case in support of the idea that the university must be more than in the city but of the city and that it has social responsibilities, especially to the poor and disenfranchised, is brilliant and spoke directly to me in my role as an administrator of a special program at Queens College that is doing this very thing. [I did not see it to be necessary to refer to myself as an unemployed former administrator—I was so enthusiastic about his ideas that I felt the need to write to him as a version of a colleague.] . . . Though up to this point I have not thought as I much as I should have about how the setting and physical arrangement of the typical university communicates and encourages exclusivity, and that to become socially engaged with the community it needs to be radically redesigned, Queens College high up on its isolated hill is certainly such an example. The again brilliance of your critique is more than just spot on; your book, unlike others of a revisionist kind, also charts a path forward for those of us involved in leadership positions in higher education. You provide the inspiration as well as the agenda for engagement as we struggle to reform the university and thereby transform it into the kind of responsive institution requires.”
My letter ran on in this vane until I had typed four single-spaced pages on Queens College stationary; and even though it was 2:00 a.m., I was so excited by Birenberg’s book and my letter, that I pulled a pair of pants on over my pajamas and raced out to mail it. I was that enthusiastic. I also hoped that he would like what I wrote about the book and him and thus might be willing to help me find a job somewhere. Anywhere.
But I heard nothing back; and thoughts about SICC, The University in the City, and any remaining enthusiasm for social engagement generated from the book and my time at Queens College rapidly receded. I was beginning to feel desperate about my own much more personal lack of engagement. To the point that, in addition to sending résumés to colleges and universities in an ever-widening geographic circle, including one all the way out to Ohio State University, and hearing nothing back except, “We will keep your vitae in our files in case an appropriate position becomes available. But in the meantime, please do not call us because we receive literally hundreds of applications of this kind each month,” out of frustration, desperation, and self-doubt, I began to think about what other careers I might pursue. Equally important, as I saw the balance in my checking account shrinking, I considered other ways to make a living. Perhaps, I thought, with a publisher or at an advertising agency—I had after all been an English major and though I had not been able to publish very much of my own work I still thought of myself as well-read and at least a decent writer. That should qualify me.
Who knew, maybe I might have the ability to write advertising copy. What, in truth, was so difficult about coming up with slogans as for Coca Cola—It’s the Real Thing, or Quality is Job One for the Ford Motor Company, whatever that means. Really. I could do that. It certainly paid a lot better than university teaching or administration. To test myself I even tried to come up with some tag lines of my own. But, thankfully, before I got too far into that, and in truth because it turned out not to be as easy as it seemed (my best line was for St. Pauli’s Girl—The Queen Of Beers, so you can see what I mean), I got a call from Birenberg’s assistant who told me that he liked my letter and would I be available to meet with him later in the week so we could talk about it. I wasn’t sure if it meant the book or my letter, much less if I might be able to talk honestly with him about my own circumstances; but to be able to talk with anyone, much less a president, much less the author of that book, on an actual university campus nearer to New York than Columbus, Ohio, and not to be needing to buy a new wardrobe for Madison Avenue, though I pretended to Birenberg’s assistant that I was “all tied up” through Thursday and though she said he was available on just Wednesday, I said “no problem, just tell me when to be there.” She said come at 3:00 and I again said “no problem.”
In my best corduroys and my old English Department tweed jacket with the leather patches on the sleeves, at noon on Wednesday I made my way across the Verrazano Bridge to Staten Island. I wasn’t comfortable with the directions—I had only been on Staten Island when driving across it as quickly as possible on the way to South Jersey or Philadelphia—and so I wanted to give myself enough time to find my way to his office. But I also wanted to take in and understand how Birenberg’s college related, including physically, to its community since he had written so extensively about that and had included many pages of glossy illustrations to make his point. I was thus eager to become familiar with his campus and its surroundings so that I would be able to talk knowingly with him about this essential aspect of his thinking.
But as I found my way there, it was immediately evident that Birenberg’s college appeared to be the very kind of place he most criticized in his book. It was even more set apart from its community, in spite of being a community college, than Queens College.
SICC sat isolated in a wooded valley between two soaring hills, Todt and Grimes, which were sites for the island’s most exclusive and valuable real estate. In fact, most of New York’s leading Mafia families had their faux-Tudor and Mansard-roofed mansions perched in enclaves on those hills, reputed to be the highest right along the east coast south of Maine. Indeed, I later learned that the wedding scene in The Godfather had been shot in one of those mansions not more than a quarter of a mile up the road from Birenberg’s campus—they had even used classrooms at the college to dress and make up the actors.
And when I drove through the security gate, where I was required to show my drivers license before I was allowed to enter, I found the campus to be more a series of nondescript buildings surrounded entirely by parking lots than anything illustrated in The Univeristy In the City. It was hard to imagine anything about Todt Hill resembling Birenberg’s city. It was even more difficult to think about what I saw through the hurricane fencing that completely encircled the campus as of the community much less in it. Queens College, by comparison, felt like the Sorbonne.
From this I knew the conversation that awaited me was going to be more complicated than I had been imagining. But I needed a job—anyone, anywhere—and whatever Birenberg might say or offer to do was going to be fine with me.
To be continued . . .
posted by Steven Zwerling at
12:15 PM
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