And I'm still on the Vicodin, so this may not be all that cogent

So. This past Tuesday, the Western Association of Schools and Colleges announced that it was terminating New College of California's accreditation. As most (if not all) of you are aware, New College is where I earned both my masters degrees, where I finished my bachelors, and where I taught as an adjunct from the fall trimester 2006 to fall 2007.

I'm not entirely sure how to feel about this. No, wait, scratch that; I have plenty of feelings on the subject -- they just don't sort out well.

A big part of me is just crushingy embarrassed. In this thoroughly modern age, when we all get our news of the internets and it's just as easy for people to make their opinions known in the comments section of the San Francisco Chronicle as it is on this lovely little blog o' mine, I can't help but be aware of how stupid we all look. And I can see how tempting a target it is: the hubris of it all! The stupid, willfully wide-eyed optimism of running a school as if ideals were all that mattered! As if all you needed were a building and a bunch of good intentions.

But the truth of the matter is, the ideals weren't what did the place in. Neither were the smart, starry-eyed utopians who were fool enough to learn and teach there over the years. It was just poorly run, poorly overseen, and didn't have the time or money to right itself before the end came.

One of the things I keep coming back to, though, is how happy I am with the education I got there. New College was the third school I attended full-time (the fifth I attended for any time at all), and, with its strong social justice angle, was the perfect top-off to my more previously literature-and-tweed-heavy academic career. I really did learn a lot there, as both a student and a teacher. And isn't that the true worth of my degrees? The effect upon my noggin?

Still, though, it's sad, and shaming, and just... yeah. Sad.

In other but not unrelated news, I ran an errand recently for an old poetry prof of mine (also recently cast adrift by New College). He gave me this poem as a thank-you.



Just in case you can't read it:

After Wang Wei


Chilling down by the water
stopped to watch clouds drift
clouds drift clouds drift
bumped into mr. green
talked laughed forgot
it was time to go

More towards the top ten

5.
Light and Shade: New and Selected Poetry, by Tom Clark

Vagabondage

Summer night
klang of stars


inner acoustic


water diamonds
around
the oars

Chiasmus

by Tom Clark, from Night Sky

Black doldrums, then a stir, then tackle snapping —
Which would you prefer, the calm after, during
Or before the storm? Anxious news flutters
Its broadsides across our ragged, tattered
Sails; lightning darkens, and it rains more
Than if the sun, drunk the night before,
Staggered by a wave, fell below the hatches;
While the moon, tossed overboard, washed ashore
On that island which no sailor reaches,
Returns to haunt our sea-locked ship, and night
Comes back to unsettle restive stagnant day.
A rotten state, finally, bearded by flies,
Dogged by the death of the wind at noon
And the breathless simoon at evening;
Black doldrums, then a stir, then tackle snapping.