Beer and Circus

by Murray Sperber

  The main motivation for belonging to one subculture, moving to another, and incorporating elements of another into one’s life has always been attachment to peers. Beyond financial circumstances, far beyond parental wishes, and even further beyond any influence exerted by university officials, undergraduates behave in certain ways and also change their behavior because of their peers. Alexander Astin, in the most extensive polling of student attitudes ever done, commented (his emphasis): “The student’s peer group is the single most potent source of influence on growth and development during the undergraduate years,” and “Students’ values, beliefs, and aspirations tend to change in the direction of the dominant values, beliefs, and aspirations of the peer group.”

  Those students who begin their university careers as collegiates usually have friends from their hometowns already in a campus sorority, fraternity, or dorm, or they quickly make friends with students on the same collegiate wavelength. If, after a year or two, some of these collegiates rebel against this subculture, they tend to do it with friends in the same housing unit, and they move into off-campus housing together. Then, if financial circumstances force them to obtain jobs to pay escalating college costs, often they work for the same employer. Finally, if they become academic, usually they form on-going study groups and hang out with their academic peers.

  In addition, cutting across the migrations from group to group are the frequent incorporation of elements from other subcultures into the dominant one. In the 1980s and early 1990s, as college expenses increased, many students, including collegiates, had to obtain part-time jobs and adopt some vocational values to remain in school. Then, because universities kept raising the price of tuition and other fees, student vocationalism continued in better economic times. An Indiana University male senior explained this point of view (various observers quote analogous comments from undergraduates in all parts of the United States):

  I think Clark and Trow’s definition of collegiate is dated in its assumption that collegiates do not have to worry about money or do not care about grades. I and some of my fraternity brothers have to work at part-time jobs and also have large student loans to pay off. Also this change in collegiate attitudes is brought on, not by a resurgence [surge?] of genuine academic interest, but by a job market that often demands course work beyond a four-year degree. Many of us might go on for MBAs.

  In other respects, the collegiate definition is still true. I love my football weekends, b-ball nights, activities with sororities, fraternity dances, and general partying. Most of all, I appreciate my fraternity brothers and the lifetime friendships I’ve made with them.

  Less typical but far from idiosyncratic were the undergraduates who incorporated elements of the rebel subculture into the collegiate one. Helped by the accessibility and merchandising of the national rebel culture, particularly its music, a male sophomore wrote in 1995:

  I am a collegiate/rebel who lives in a house on Second Street with some of my pledge class buddies from the fraternity. But we also constantly listen to the Grateful Dead and are deep into the culture surrounding the band and even join the Deadhead tour whenever possible. However, we still belong to our fraternity and go to functions there. We also love basketball and football and have season tickets for both. Our favorite bar is a totally Greek hangout, but we do our drugs at our house.

  When Clark and Trow conducted their research in the 1950s, they would have never encountered this response: collegiate/rebels! Even in the 1960s on some campuses, fights occurred between Greeks and rebels. However, by the 1980s and subsequently, collegiates could easily participate in aspects of rebel culture, primarily the music and the drugs, incorporating them into their leisure activities.

  Another cross-subcultural group, in part necessitated by rising tuition and other college costs, were academics who became vocational to help pay for their college educations. Some academic/vocationals existed during the first three-quarters of the twentieth century, but the modern era greatly increased their number. A male discussed his journey:

  I am a history major with an almost perfect GPA. I also work twenty hours a week in a mind-numbing job at 7-11. However, I was recently accepted for graduate school at Berkeley and I know that I will do well there. I also hope to obtain a Teaching Assistantship there to help solve my financial problems, and to integrate working for money into my life.

  This student then added a P.S. that illustrated his time with yet another student subculture:

  I should mention that I dropped out of college for a semester and lived in Mexico because my girlfriend, and my best friend, and his girlfriend (all really smart people and top students) convinced me to do it with them. That was our rebel phase. What a waste, financially and intellectually. Also I missed a whole Big Ten basketball season.

  The story of the Mexican sojourn illustrates how peer groups affect even academic students, the subculture most in tune with parental and professorial demands. To a much greater extent, peer pressure influences collegiates, resulting in unwritten dress and speech codes, and a high degree of conformity. Similarly, many observers have noted the ironic conformity of rebels, also often adhering to dress and speech codes, as well as peer pressure to be cool or hip. And in a final twist of contemporary consumer culture, national clothing companies merchandise the rebel look, and, as an authentic female rebel student complained:

  There are all too many sorority girls on this campus wearing flannels and getting tattoos and piercings because this is the prevalent [rebel] image offered by MTV and other media. This trendy conformist nonconformism dismays those of us who truly wish to pull away from the mainstream in order to acquire an individual perspective.

  Similarly, many fraternity men insert earrings and other body jewelry and don appropriate rebel clothes for weekend “raves” and “clubbing,” only to return to the “catalog” collegiate look (Abercrombie & Fitch, Tommy Hilfiger, et cetera) during the week.

  Finally, some members of one group of vocational students—intercollegiate athletes—have adopted a number of the traditional customs of the collegiate subculture, notably initiation and drinking ceremonies. Throughout the 1990s, alcohol-related incidents involving college athletes occurred, as did some nasty hazing episodes. The increasing isolation of athletes from the general student population, and their sense of their teams as elite units, often prompted the hazing of new members. Ironically, team initiations escalated at a time when fraternity and sorority hazing declined somewhat, and campus administrators had great difficulty in curtailing the athletes’ activities.

  At the core of the problem for university officials is their escalation of big-time college sports. From the first contact between an athlete and a school, the jock knows that he or she is special and is treated much better than ordinary student applicants—among other perks, the university usually pays for the visit. This treatment continues when the athlete enrolls, and it extends through his or her time at the institution. Even though the jock, working in a sport for thirty, forty, or more hours per week, definitely earns her or his athletic scholarship, the sense of specialness and immunity from ordinary rules never departs; in fact, when combined with anger over excessive work demands, the result can be antisocial, even criminal behavior. Many intercollegiate athletes pay a high personal price for being big-time college sports entertainers. But their schools promote, and large numbers of regular undergraduates love, the beer-and-circus that the jocks provide.

  Party, Party, Party [at Louisiana State University]

  Nearly every [student] organization on campus hosts parties throughout the year … . [For football weekends] all of the campus streets are closed to accommodate the massive number of people tailgating, drinking, and partying … . Such frenetic activity and enthusiasm extend to all aspects of student life at LSU, and often preclude more serious activities like studying.

  What is a typical [student] weekend schedule? Friday—drink, fall asleep in someone’s bathtub; Saturday—leave bathtub, watch the game,
drink; Sunday—drink lightly.

  —The Insider’s Guide to the Colleges, 2000 edition

  One of the few campus activities at Big-time U’s that unite undergraduates from different subcultures are college sports events, even prompting some uniformity of dress on “game days” and “game nights.” On football Saturdays at Louisiana State, most students dress in the school colors of purple and gold. At Ohio State University before football games, a majority of students wear scarlet and gray to support their beloved Buckeyes, and many participate in such rituals as buying a slice of cake from the “Cake Lady” outside Ohio Stadium. Similarly, as many Indiana University undergraduates mentioned, whatever their “home subculture,” they were Hoosier fans.

  One expects collegiates to fervently support intercollegiate athletics but, at the beginning of the twenty-first century, as the electronic media increasingly emphasizes sports, many vocational students have also become fans, listening to or watching the broadcasts of their universities’ teams while at work or commuting. Similarly, because sports have become so central to American culture, some academic students feel compelled to follow their schools’ teams or be tagged “total losers,” a fate worse than normal scholarly “nerdiness.” Only hard-core rebel students adamantly hold out, such as the female rebel who complained about sorority girls and also “dissed” college sports. However, more casual rebels like the IU Grateful Dead fans enjoy intercollegiate athletics.

  In the questionnaire for this book, students revealed how much time they spent during the average school week viewing live sports events, watching or listening to sports broadcasts on TV, radio, or on the Internet. The results indicated the major importance of athletics to contemporary collegians, particularly males: only 16 percent of men spent less than five hours per week in sports fan activities; 56 percent logged between six and fifteen hours; 19 percent, sixteen to twenty-five hours; and 9 percent, more than twenty-five. On the other hand, 71 percent of women spent less than five hours per week on this pastime; 26 percent, between six and fifteen hours; and 3 percent logged more than ten.

  As always, totals varied according to type of school: male respondents at NCAA Division III schools, mainly liberal arts colleges, recorded times similar to the national women’s averages, and 38 percent of the women at these colleges spent zero hours per week as sports fans. However, at NCAA Division I schools, the totals for both men and women exceeded the national averages, and, most striking, a significant percentage of male students (32 percent) spent more hours per week as sports fans than they did “studying and doing course assignments.” One respondent explained in a P.S.: “Me and my housemates really attend Bristol University, not Ohio U, but we party here in Athens.” (Bristol University is part of an ESPN advertising campaign depicting the network as a university, and its announcers as professors teaching the only worthwhile subject in America—sports in all its combinations and permutations.)

  For student sports fans, part of the attraction of ESPN, particularly ESPN2 and the network’s websites, are the constant updates of scores of games in progress and final results. This information feeds the sports fan’s appetite and also helps student gamblers who have “money down” on various games. The latter group, mainly males at beer-and-circus schools, consume many hours per week following their bets, and this undoubtedly boosted the totals on the question on sports spectatorship. (See chapter 17 for a full discussion of sports gambling on campus.)

  Few professors at large, public research universities would express shock or dismay to learn that many of their male undergraduates watch more hours of sports per week than they study. However, even fewer of these faculty members could name their students’ favorite daily TV sports program (SportsCenter) or identify Dan Patrick or Linda Cohn (SportsCenter announcers).

  Many [university] teachers live entirely in the tiny, incestuous, self-enclosed world of academia, and haven’t the faintest idea what goes on outside of it [even on their own campuses].

  Many college teachers have a very limited frame of reference. They can tell you on what day of the week the Treaty of Utrecht was signed, or the name of Jonathan Swift’s maid, but they will have no idea who Oprah Winfrey or Danielle Steel or Bo Jackson is.

  Solution: … Pity the poor isolated soul.

  —Scott Edelstein, author of a nationally

  published freshman handbook

  Some academics would point out—if they could identify Bo Jackson—that sports heroes come and go, and that popular culture is ephemeral and not worth following. Whether one agrees or disagrees with this argument, Edelstein’s comments indicate the huge gulf between academic culture and undergraduate life, never wider than on the topic of sports, especially intercollegiate athletics. Pollster Lou Harris ascertained that a large majority of faculty have little or no interest in college sports; moreover, they tend to disparage their colleagues who do, including those professors who serve on Faculty Intercollegiate Athletics Boards (or Committees), often terming them “jock-sniffers.” In Harris’s poll, faculty gave board members a 77 percent negative rating; whereas only 11 percent marked positive, and 12 percent had no opinion.

  Harris’s results, combined with the surveys for this book, also suggest a generation gap on the college sports issue between many faculty members and a growing number of their professional “children,” academically inclined undergraduates. Nevertheless, the latter maintain very positive views of the faculty, whereas Scott Edelstein articulated a more typical undergraduate attitude, “Pity the poor isolated soul.”

  Actually, this jibe is generous compared to some of the derogatory remarks, often well deserved, that nonacademic undergraduates hurl at professors. In interviews for this book and in P.S. notes on the questionnaire, contemporary students—whether they belonged to the collegiate, vocational, or rebel subcultures—generally expressed negative or indifferent feelings toward the faculty, often regarding professors as beings from an alien world. The recent Boyer Commission study also noticed this phenomenon, commenting, “At many universities, research faculty and undergraduate students do not expect to interact with each other,” and these expectations are usually fulfilled.

  Undergraduates often illustrate the “two solitudes” at Big-time U’s with vivid anecdotes. In a story that students throughout the country could repeat, an Indiana University junior told his school newspaper:

  I had the good fortune to be among the many hundreds of people honored at the [university’s] Founder’s Day celebration … . I marveled that the place seemed to be packed completely full, including the balcony, with proud parents and friends—except for this one big hole up front, in the section reserved for faculty … .

  There were only about twenty or thirty or so faculty representatives there … [of] the more than one thousand faculty members here in Bloomington. [At the time, there were 1,539 IUB full-time faculty members.]

  —William Tam

  At most research universities, faculty attendance at graduation and other school ceremonies is appallingly low, and dropping, mainly because research professors feel little attachment to their institutions and even less to the average undergraduate within them. In addition, some faculty do not attend because they regard these ceremonies as empty “PR shows,” mounted by administrators to sustain the pretense that general undergraduate education is important.

  A humorous but no less telling example of the distance between undergraduates and the faculty appeared in a cartoon in the University of Michigan student newspaper. U Magazine, a monthly insert in hundreds of college papers, subsequently reprinted it, confirming its meaning to undergraduates at other schools. The first panel shows a young student exulting, “The thing that excites me about college is the professors. The leading minds of the world are at my disposal. I can talk face to face with them and deeply benefit from their knowledge.”

  In the next panel, the student exclaims,

  “Here comes my history professor, now.”

  In the final panel, the student
shouts,

  “Professor Holmes.”

  The faculty member, never breaking stride or glancing around, mutters,

  “E-mail me.”

  The Michigan cartoon puts a contemporary spin on the traditional hostility between regular undergraduates and the faculty; it also refutes one of the main propaganda lies of Big-time U’s—the presence of famous faculty on campus improves general undergraduate education.

  Finally, however, the U Magazine cartoon and William Tam’s description belong in the anecdotal evidence file. Much more authoritative information on the ocean between the faculty and undergraduates at research universities comes from the annual Princeton Review surveys based on interviews with almost sixty thousand undergraduates at more than three hundred schools. In addition, these results reveal the shorter distance between professors and students at institutions emphasizing undergraduate education.

  The [Princeton Review] rankings are based directly upon what students on each campus tell us about their college [in their responses to our questionnaire surveys] … . Once the surveys have been completed and the responses stored in our database, each college is given a grade-point-average (GPA) for its students’ answers to each individual multiple-response question.