We thought we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d moved to a different world the first time my wife and I, with our 3-months-old son, drove in to Charlottesville, Va. I had received a fellowship to study English at the University of Virginia and was thrilled at the prospect.<\/p>\n
It was a great experience, in the early \u00e2\u20ac\u02dc70s, meeting and studying under people like Fredsen Bowers, a Shakespeare scholar; Douglas Day, UVa\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s \u00e2\u20ac\u0153renaissance man\u00e2\u20ac\u009d; and Ed Hirsch, who authored the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Cultural Literacy\u00e2\u20ac\u009d series, an academic best-seller.<\/p>\n
And we felt good exploring the haunts of Edgar Allan Poe, a one-time student there, and writer William Faulkner, who lectured there.<\/p>\n
What surprised us the most was the wealth. My wife, Bonnie, 40 years later, still tells people about my reaction: \u00e2\u20ac\u0153There\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s so much luxury here.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Lawns were manicured, cars gleamed, affluence abounded. On first driving through Rugby Road, the university\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s fraternity-sorority row, we were amazed at the display of wealth. The parking lot of the frat houses there shone, looking like a new-car lot for the affluent.<\/p>\n
It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s true: People showed off their possessions. One freshman at registration said to no one in particular, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153My dad gave me a Mercedes for high school graduation and he\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ll be sending me $500 a month for expenses.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
What could Bonnie and I have done with a luxury car and half a thousand every month! Of course, expenses were lower then, and people could still enjoy a restaurant meal for three bucks.<\/p>\n
I avoided those super-wealthy kids who complained if their monthly parental stipend was a day late, or if Daddy deigned to mail them airline tickets for business class rather than for first class.<\/p>\n
This struggling graduate student made do with a six-year-old station wagon, a heap of student loans, and savings from our years at Cuba, N.M. The modest non-teaching fellowship I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d received helped.<\/p>\n
We made friends with other graduate students, most of whom drove Chevettes and had a child or two. One family, the Zutells, complained that in their campus-area apartment, a pampered undergraduate bragged to Jerry that his father had \u00e2\u20ac\u0153paid more for my fraternity ring than you pay for a year\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s tuition.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d<\/p>\n
Everything in proportion. True, things cost less then, but we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re talking inflated prices as well as inflated dollars.<\/p>\n
The University of Virginia, founded by Thomas Jefferson, was considered a leader not only in academics but in matters of propriety; all who enrolled there needed to sign a pledge neither to lie, cheat nor steal. Every assignment, whether submitted or performed as homework, needed to contain the words, \u00e2\u20ac\u0153On my honor as a gentleman (or lady), I have neither given nor received help on this assignment.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d The one time I forgot to \u00e2\u20ac\u0153pledge\u00e2\u20ac\u009d my in-class examination, I received a call at home, urging me to return to campus immediately \u00e2\u20ac\u201d an 11-mile trek \u00e2\u20ac\u201d to make things legal.<\/p>\n
Our landlady lived in a home named Bleak House \u00e2\u20ac\u201d she said the name of the mansion came long before Dickens wrote a novel with the same title. Bonnie, Adam and I lived in Bleak House Cottage, a one-bedroom place which to this day outshines anything we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve ever owned \u00e2\u20ac\u201d or lived in.<\/p>\n
The university pledge, neither to lie, cheat nor steal, is zealously guarded, but it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s difficult to agree with all aspects of it. The \u00e2\u20ac\u0153lying\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153stealing\u00e2\u20ac\u009d parts of the pledge refer not only to the liar or thief but to witnesses as well.<\/p>\n
Let me explain:<\/p>\n
One morning I was enjoying a cup of coffee dispensed for a dime in our \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Robot Room.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d A fellow student then dropped in a coin, got nothing, cursed, punched the machine and left. A third person soon inserted her dime, whereupon two cups came out.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u0153Want another cup of coffee? It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s free,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d she said about her windfall. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153No thanks.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d Another person who\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d witnessed the behavior of the temperamental coffee machine, reported the freebie incident to the dean. Two days later four of us were called in to answer to the accusation that we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d all violated the honor code: The original student had failed to report being ripped off by the machine; the student who received two cups for the price of one; me, and of course, the student who reported the crime.<\/p>\n
My first reaction was that being summoned to the dean\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s office was clearly a case over-kill. We missed classes that day and received another recitation of the \u00e2\u20ac\u0153lying\u00e2\u20ac\u009d and \u00e2\u20ac\u0153stealing\u00e2\u20ac\u009d parts of the code. The only person cleared that same day was I. Why? Apparently because my having merely witnessed the machine\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s malfunction didn\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t rise to the level that would justify expulsion.<\/p>\n
I still wonder about that brush with situational ethics: Was my having witnessed the matter sufficient to have one or all of us expelled?<\/p>\n
I heard days later that the whole matter had been dropped, much to the disappointment of the student who reported the matter. \u00e2\u20ac\u0153Stealing is stealing, even if it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just a 10-cent cup of coffee,\u00e2\u20ac\u009d he said.<\/p>\n
\u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2 \u00e2\u20ac\u00a2<\/p>\n
By now you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve probably heard the lurid details of a reported gang rape at the University of Virginia during a fraternity party. A co-ed said she\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d accepted an invitation from a fraternity member but instead of a peaceful party, she said, she was raped by several fraternity members.<\/p>\n
The news later appeared in Rolling Stone magazine. Many were alarmed.<\/p>\n
But the alleged victim soon had trouble recalling crucial events. It turns out the assaults were reported much later than they occurred; the woman misstated the dates of the assault, and changed details of the alleged attack, and the witnesses, if any, never materialized.<\/p>\n
It makes one wonder: Was the whole thing fabricated? Ask the editors of Rolling Stone, whose editors published a full retraction. That\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s what happens when journalists practice shoddy investigative reporting and fail to check their facts.<\/p>\n
Even the prestigious Columbia University School of Journalism was asked to weigh in on how Rolling Stone had had serious doubts about the gang-rape, but covered it anyway, despite serious doubts.<\/p>\n
More on this later.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
We thought we\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d moved to a different world the first time my wife and I, with our 3-months-old son, drove in to Charlottesville, Va. I had received a fellowship to study English at the University of Virginia and was thrilled at the prospect. It was a great experience, in the early \u00e2\u20ac\u02dc70s, meeting and studying […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":22,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[2],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1358"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/22"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1358"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1358\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1359,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1358\/revisions\/1359"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1358"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1358"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/rezio.net\/woa\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1358"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}