THE CASE FOR THE DOWNTOWN CAMPUS

Our differences of opinion are legitimate and can be civilly expressed. Let me express the Downtown side of the issue here. I shall try to avoid the mis-framings into which the issue has fallen -- progress vs. stasis, new vs. old Trent, young vs. old generation, managerial efficiency vs. chaos, etc. These mis-framings do the community and its debate no good at all. Yes, I presume faith in a whole academic community which embodies the age-old institution of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. In this spirit, may I say that I am proud to belong to a university that has so distinguished itself in the Sciences? I do not understand the work of the Sciences in detail, but I can sure recognize academic excellence when I see it. I ask scientists in return to take a moment to appreciate the work we are doing in the Social Sciences and the Humanities. Our argument is that we cannot do this work excellently without a guaranteed population of superior students. And we cannot match Trent’s excellence in the Sciences without the milieu in which education in the Humanities happens. If scientists were told suddenly that they had to advance knowledge without the use of laboratory equipment, they might understand the shock humanists feel at the prospect of teaching without a community of full-time knowledge-seekers. For humanists depend for their inquiry-oriented teaching on milieus in which ideas take form and are criticized, tested in the heat of after-hours discussion by students. Think of it as a slow various form of the repeatable experiment. Our case is that this Humanities teaching, which has given Trent a national reputation, is threatened with extinction by a Superbuilt uni-campus. What is achieved Downtown cannot be recreated in new facilities on the main campus.

Let me explain. Please understand that I am restricting my reasoning to the Humanities.

TRENT’S STUDENT BASE For over three decades, Trent has enjoyed a niche in Canadian higher learning. The niche is such a good fit that recruiting happens largely by word-of-mouth to the particular kind of students Trent exists for. So effective in this self-recruiting grapevine that the High-school Recruiting staff, for the 1999-2000 recruiting cycle, can use new images to bite into the Greater Toronto Area market, counting on the usual grapevine to bring in Trent’s traditional core.

This core of students choosing Trent has shrunk only a little, not because of a change in student demographics or generational outlook, but because Trent was outpromoted by the large universities. Our same institutional image, if hybridized a little and given better funding, will keep Trent to its market share. It is generally understood in high school that Trent is where you go if "small" means a socially uncompetitive, educationally serious alternative to mass education.

For these reasons, Trent attracts a relatively high proportion of the sons and daughters of people involved in education. Typically, these students believe that education is a good thing in itself. And education is a public trust. Many come to Trent to find their career, and most succeed.

These students typically have been involved in community service, as well as some extra-curricular skill or activity. Almost all have worked part-time while going to classes. Many listen to the CBC. Most have a background in leadership. Their biggest fear is having to conform to a university milieu whose lifestyle is not natural to them. Having had an inspiring high-school teacher along the way (this seems to be universally true of Trent students), their second biggest fear is being anonymities in an abstract university. Depending on their degree of adventure and income level, the second choice for these students is often McGill, or Guelph which has some of Trent’s advantages.

I’m sure you know these things already. I repeat them here according to the adage that a company which forgets its main clients and the services it exists to provide soon goes out of business.

THE STUDENT VILLAGE DOWNTOWN

In the sociology of student life at Trent, the dominant pattern is for students to spend first year in residence. Then they join an upper-year student village in Peterborough’s traditional north end. Here they live in groups with shopping nearby, and, if they are in the Humanities, education practically at their doorstep. This fact of life is actually more important to Trent than the college system. The student village is the vital retention device at this institution. In this real respect, the Downtown Colleges are more than old buildings – they are the hubs of complex overlapping milieus that network after hours to Peterborough’s bars and cafés and to the kitchens of shared accommodation in the traditional downtown core. It can be truly said that while other universities are 9:00 to 5:00 educational venues, education never stops at Trent. While the Symons Campus is a ghost town in the evenings, there are often three events happening simultaneously in a Downtown College. This is Trent’s unique answer to universities like Queen’s with its adjacent neighbourhood of student homes, and it is Trent’s alternative to the suburban commuter university like York.

HUMAN INSTITUTIONAL WARMTH

This learning environment happening right in the midst of student lives in the Downtown Colleges has also given Trent its claim to personal education. Other universities can make the claim, but those who choose Trent and choose to remain here know that this University is genuinely personal. Walking to classes, there is no separation of roles in being a student and being a human being. Students bring their whole selves to their education. Reciprocally, our personal teaching habits work precisely because even the most research-enclosed faculty member cannot, in response to the human presence of students and to the ordinary human honesty with which they participate in seminars, think of students as "them." Some students bring their dogs to classes. Single mothers sometimes bring their children, who colour away in their colouring books on the seminar room floor. If someone is missing, a student goes and phones them. Finding out she is sick, the whole seminar commiserates. No other university in Canada can match Trent’s institutional warmth whose tone is set and guaranteed by the Downtown Colleges. Professors don’t impersonate being professors here. Students don’t impersonate being students.

THE HUMANITIES OUTLOOK

This outlook is more pronounced if you are a student in the Humanities. Most students at Trent take their education seriously – this is not a place for frat houses and football games – but the way Science students and Humanities students embrace their education differs. The Science students have a career to motivate them; they also have the ready-made discipline of a branch of organized knowledge to place themselves within and a hierarchy for achieving their goals. The Humanities students, interdisciplinary by nature, and with no job targets in sight (unless they are in Education), rely more on internal motivation. This does not make them "flaky," but it does make them subjective.

If it is a December night, they may in their self-responsibility to things simply not stand in the cold for a bus to take them to an interesting guest speaker. (We have long since stopped scheduling events on the main campus because audiences fail to materialize.) If it is a rainy March day, students may just skip that class on the main campus. Of course, such casualness is routine at the large universities, and the professors there do not care about attendance. They rely on tests, exams, and essays marked by TAs. At McGill there is a multiple choice test in English: "John _____ is the author of _____ Lost." (This is reported by former McGill student, then Trent graduate Leah McLaren who writes a culture column in the GLOBE.) In contrast, what gets Trent students out of bed and eager for learning is the proximity of the classes to them at Robinson and Traill. They are not going "out" to an institution. This is why we have the success we do in retaining students. Close to their part-time jobs, close to their cheap accommodation, they come to classes spontaneously and so they are not alienated from their own education in the manner of the abstract universities.

There is also the cultural identity of the downtown campuses in their 30-year evolution with Peterborough’s Downtown. Known to young creative people across Canada as one of the nation’s artistic meccas, this Peterborough scene has been called "an Upper Canadian Berkeley" (GLOBE & MAIL 15 April 1998). It draws students to Trent; many of our distinguished graduates in the arts and media cut their cultural teeth in this milieu. Trent is unimaginable without its direct involvement in the Peterborough arts scene which the GLOBE called "defiantly, stunningly alive."

If you want a larger view of the Peterborough-Humanities culture and its graduates, go to www.trentu.ca/culturalstudies, but please note that this site is oriented towards high schools and it only glances at the exceptional work being done by other departments such as English and History. The site is more fun if you install "FLASH." If you have time to get to know the Humanities personality of our University further, you can read about it in my VIRTUAL FREEDOM (copies at the bookstore). Uncannily, this novel about Trent and its wacky people has become true up to page 202, proving that its success in winning a 1999 Leacock Award of Merit for Humour is not just because the book is funny but because it is an accurate depiction.

IS THIS WORTH KEEPING? For a relatively small cost, we have a self-recruiting core of Humanities students which is second to none in Canada in quality and spirit. What will be lost if the Downtown asset is traded in?

Because these fears verge on certainties, let me state them bluntly:

First, Trent will become a miniature version of the suburban commuter university. Trent’s smallness will suddenly turn from an asset to a liability. Students will feel their education is remote – "out there" at the end of a user-pay bus ride.

Once out there, students will feel victimized by food prices set by a concession exploiting the monopoly of a captive consumer market.

The privatized residences will not work for the same reason as the present Symons Campus residences don’t work now for students after 1st year. There is nothing to do out there. Unfortunately, showpiece architecture set in nature is not enough to hold students for three winters on the Otonabee. Lacking any other drawing card, students will not stay at Trent.

The privatized residences mean endless hassles with a remote, uncaring landlord, with Trent powerless to intervene. A model at many U.S. universities, and, I believe, at only one university in Canada, this is a hothouse atmosphere that parents will not trust their daughters to. The privatized "dormitories" will invite vandalism. Trent has a reputation for the healthiest environment of gender relations of any university in Canada. For the first time in its history, there will be dormitory sexism. This is inevitable. It will take only one reported incident of dormitory sexism on a scale with the ones that are regularly heard from Queen’s for up to 600 students a year not to choose Trent as their alternative university.

The proposed Humanities facility will be a "college" only in name. In fact, at $11 million it will be essentially an office and teaching facility. The social and especially the artistic milieus that have co- evolved over 30 years with the city cannot take root here.

The news will spread through the word-of-mouth recruiting network, through high-school counsellors’ offices, and through MACLEAN’S that Trent’s two strengths – a personal education in a small milieu – are extinct. Almost certainly, Trent will sink in the MACLEAN’S rankings below St. F. X. and Laurier because of losses in the following categories: average entering grade; proportion who graduate; class size; and alumni support. With its national and international liberal arts reputation gone, the place will become a local educational centre with dubious vocational programs like Nursing and Dentistry to fill in for the vanishing Humanities and International students. However, there is another endangered core to mention, and it deserves special attention.

TRENT FACULTY UNPLUGGED

At the 9:00 to 5:00 post-secondary institutions, profs take the elevators down from their offices, interrupting research in order to teach. At Trent, in contrast, there is a critical mass of faculty who live their lives through the University. These teachers go the extra mile for their students in ways no other university can match. Many of these faculty are in the Humanities downtown. They work flat- out for Trent, putting students first because of an overall community commitment to education. If these communal bonds are cut, and collegial groupings atomized in macro units called "Humanities," "Social Sciences" and "Sciences" as anticipated in the Task Force Report, these faculty members will seek projects outside of the university’s immediacy in order to stabilize their self-respect. When this happens, there will be no more of the extra effort for deserving students that distinguishes Trent.

No more time-consuming independent study courses. No more summer reading courses to make up a missing credit ("You can take it on the web"). No more teaching in Oshawa ("I’ve got a book to write"). No more small-group teaching ("Why teach 12 hours a week when I can teach 6 like everywhere else?"). No more bringing important guest speakers to the University. Or graduate thesis supervision, which is also time-consuming. Or counselling students not to drop out at Christmas. Or helping with recruiting. When Professor Julia Harrison spoke from Calgary of a "withdrawal of spirit" on the part of faculty, this is what she was speaking of.

These professors are essential to the role of re-creating a Humanities milieu on the main campus, if that is even remotely possible. But they will not be available to do that. Students will sink on their list of priorities – not because teachers don’t care about students but simply because teachers are not allowed to be, in the fullest sense, teachers. I believe the Administration, in the grip of what it views as survivalist management, does not see that the Downtown Colleges represent an even larger crisis of survival.

A UNITED CAMPUS?

This sentimentality puts a good face on centralization. But the viewpoint falls apart under examination. The Administration’s plan to house Humanities, Social Science and Sciences in separate facilities contradicts their very ideal of cross-disciplinary fertilization. It also contradicts the talk of a "re-vitalized" college system. Four interdisciplinary departments were formed in the crucible of Peter Robinson College, but everyone doubts that administrative centralization will lead to academic integration. Scientists and Humanists rarely cooperate at any university – their discourses are different. Scientists do not, as a rule, care very much about what goes on outside their classrooms. Humanists depend for their teaching on milieus. I fear the Administration, focussed on immediate opportunity management, is unable to appreciate how heritage buildings make milieus, how milieus make every teacher and student exceptional.

I’ll stop here. Thank you for reading all this. The case for the Downtown Campus is complex and lengthy enough as it is, even outside of current atmospherics and necessities. The case should have been transparent long ago, so that one half of the University wouldn’t be put in the position of defending itself against the other half.

Sean Kane