COASTING THROUGH COLLEGE

Katha Pollitt is an aging white feminist who hasn't had a new idea about anything since 1968. In her latest column she says that young men are worthless, and don't deserve a college education. Here is what I think, and remember. Please comment nicely!

Dear Katha,

I loved your latest column in The Nation, "Affirmative Action For Men." I know better than anyone that many male college students are just "coasting along." I remember when I was a sophomore at Columbia in the fall of 1982. I lived on a floor full of young men who were everything you describe. These guys were loud, privileged and stupid. They'd sit up all night and drink. They'd play poker all night. They'd kick a football up and down the hall for hours, and blast their music really loud when I was trying to sleep. Mostly it was rock and roll they played, like "Rock the Casbah" by the Clash. (Remember that one?) But now and then they'd put on a song called "I've Got The World On A String" by Frank Sinatra. And you know what? Those guys really did have the world on a string. Just like you said in your column, they were coasting. But I never coasted. And I never had the world on a string!

I had a tough time at Columbia. My father was an English professor, and I idolized him. But he was also an alcoholic with a long history of mental health problems. And in 1982 he tried to kill himself. It was a devastating blow. But what made it worse was that I had no one to talk to. I certainly couldn't talk to the guys on my floor! But none of my professors seemed to care either.

That's a problem you don't discuss in your article. There are certainly kids who coast at top colleges. But a lot of the professors are coasting too. They teach the same books, and use the same lecture notes, year after year. They avoid campus functions. They treat students with condescension, indifference, or contempt. And when they see kids in trouble, they look the other way.

In the fall of my senior year I took a seminar on Dickens across the street at Barnard, an "elite" women's college. This was a small class, in a small room, no more than ten students tops. I was the only male student in the room. I remember one girl who sat across from me who fell asleep in every class. Literally every class. I still remember the silver necklace she wore that said "princess." Was she coasting? Did she have the world on a string? I don't know.

But I do know this. The only adult in the room was a very distinguished female professor, and she said nothing. Ever. And she was seated about five feet away! That to me is coasting. That female professor abdicated all moral responsibility. She was a woman in charge of educating other women, and she just decided that it was easier to look the other way. Now what does a great feminist like Katha Pollitt have to say about that?

Katha Pollitt, you say today's college men don't want to study. I studied day and night for four years at Columbia, and I got nothing. Not one professor ever gave me the slightest encouragement. Never so much as a smile or a friendly word. No mentoring, no counseling, no free advice. There was never a time when I felt I could trust them with any of the crushing family burdens that were literally keeping me up at night.

Some of my Columbia professors were men, and some were women. Some were very old, and some were quite young. What united them was a barely veiled hostility towards all undergraduates, male and female alike, and a shared resentment at having to shoulder any sort of responsibility for our welfare. Some of them loved books, but all of them hated the day to day responsibilities of teaching. They hated the human part of the job. And they let us know it by doing as little to help us as they possibly could. They weren't working. They were coasting.

Now let's see you write a column about that!