A UNI eulogy
I found out last week that the University Professors Program, the college that granted my degree at BU, will be shut down.
Read about it here:
BU Today - official propaganda
Daily Free Press - amateur propaganda
What did UNI represent to me? On one level, it was just a program, a cog in the bureaucratic machine of BU, a name on my diploma. A long, straight hallway lined with professor's offices. A name that was drenched with elitism, like so much else associated with it.
But UNI was also the reason I came to BU. Where I met my first, and best, friends in Boston. The mechanism that allowed me to study what I deemed important and take whatever classes I could talk my way into - a freedom that felt impossible to use effectively. And that house, that beautiful house where I lived for three years. What will become of 188 and 190 Bay State Road? It was the most tangible part of UNI.
Yeah, I've already switched to past tense. Letters will be written - hell, I'll probably write one - but it's hard to put up a fight when you see the list of the members of the "ad-hoc committee" that sent UNI to the gallows. It included six UNI faculty members, some of whom were professors who I knew and respected. If these people see no other choice but to end the program, what hope does it have?
And maybe UNI will be replaced by something better, something that offers the freedom of UNI to more students, something that brings together the odd kids who would otherwise have nothing else in common.
There were rumors of UNI's cancellation for years. If it happened back then, I would be far more angry than I am now. And I am angry - mostly for my friends who haven't graduated yet, stuck in a zombie college. Time and distance, plus the guilt I feel for not being the ideal UNI student, have dulled my desire to fight.
What if the college they said had no "community", the people who had little in common, banded together and saved UNI? There would be beauty in that. But I can't argue with my immediate, gut feeling upon hearing the news, which was pessimism.
It's sad... but regardless, they can't take back what UNI gave me. They can't change the past.
Read about it here:
BU Today - official propaganda
Daily Free Press - amateur propaganda
What did UNI represent to me? On one level, it was just a program, a cog in the bureaucratic machine of BU, a name on my diploma. A long, straight hallway lined with professor's offices. A name that was drenched with elitism, like so much else associated with it.
But UNI was also the reason I came to BU. Where I met my first, and best, friends in Boston. The mechanism that allowed me to study what I deemed important and take whatever classes I could talk my way into - a freedom that felt impossible to use effectively. And that house, that beautiful house where I lived for three years. What will become of 188 and 190 Bay State Road? It was the most tangible part of UNI.
Yeah, I've already switched to past tense. Letters will be written - hell, I'll probably write one - but it's hard to put up a fight when you see the list of the members of the "ad-hoc committee" that sent UNI to the gallows. It included six UNI faculty members, some of whom were professors who I knew and respected. If these people see no other choice but to end the program, what hope does it have?
And maybe UNI will be replaced by something better, something that offers the freedom of UNI to more students, something that brings together the odd kids who would otherwise have nothing else in common.
There were rumors of UNI's cancellation for years. If it happened back then, I would be far more angry than I am now. And I am angry - mostly for my friends who haven't graduated yet, stuck in a zombie college. Time and distance, plus the guilt I feel for not being the ideal UNI student, have dulled my desire to fight.
What if the college they said had no "community", the people who had little in common, banded together and saved UNI? There would be beauty in that. But I can't argue with my immediate, gut feeling upon hearing the news, which was pessimism.
It's sad... but regardless, they can't take back what UNI gave me. They can't change the past.