RALEIGH – The freshman reading program on UNC campuses perennially evokes controversy. Freshmen are usually assigned a book to read during the summer before they start school. UNC-Chapel Hill, in particular, has stirred up storms of reaction ever since 2002, when it selected a book giving a rosy view of the Quran, less than a year after Sept. 11. So offended were some students that the program became voluntary.
The books are usually selected to challenge the complacent, consumerist worldview that faculty members consider their new charges to hold. Thus, they can be grim stories such as Blood Done Sign My Name, about a racially inspired murder in North Carolina, or an antimarket polemic such as Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickel and Dimed. This year’s Chapel Hill selection is Covering, by Yale Law School professor Kenji Yoshino, who talks about oppressive pressures for conformity in the United States.
But the focus on trendy issues and the breaking of taboos is not universal. Last year, at the University of Colorado at Colorado Springs, students read two short classics. The apparent success of the program has led officials to choose the same ones again, and to assign a third, as well. North Carolina could learn from the choices.
The first reading was Plato’s Apology, the speech by Socrates before the jury that ultimately sentenced him to death for his teachings. The second was Martin Luther King’s Letter from a Birmingham Jail, which he wrote when imprisoned for leading a nonviolent protest against segregation. King cites Socrates several times in the letter. This year the additional reading will be Plato’s allegory of the cave from The Republic.
The selections, about 35 pages for the Plato piece and 23 pages for the King letter, come in a collection of readings distributed to all participating freshmen. The full collection, which the students do not have to read, includes, among other works, selections from Tocqueville’s Democracy in America and a speech by Frederick Douglass.
The reading and its discussions are a key element of a freshman seminar program at Colorado Springs. The program is voluntary. However, about 80 percent of the school’s freshmen participate, and the program starts two days before the rest of classes.
Last year, students also received a study guide, A Free Society and Its Challenges. The guide gives practical advice: “Do not be misled by the number of pages into thinking you can properly do the assignment in a hurry”; “performing the work properly will help you develop intellectual skills that will contribute to your overall success.” It also gives background for both pieces, including a glossary of terms ranging from Aristophanes to “Bull” Connor.
The guide also states that one of the goals of the readings and discussion is “to challenge you to join with the college community in addressing the question of what your responsibilities are as a citizen of a free society.”
Is this the kind of reading that students want? The evidence so far is that they do. The main reaction from the students, said Constance Staley, director of the seminar program, was that they needed more time to discuss such “mega-issues” as freedom and responsibility. This fall they will get it. The program will include a series of evening colloquia during the semester to explore the three readings further.
Drew Castle, a student who led one of the discussions, said that he was pleased and a little surprised that “the vast majority“ of the students in his group had read the selections and were able to discuss them. After some initial prompting, by Castle, “we went well over our two-hour time limit,” he said.
Nina Ellis-Frischman, assistant director, said the readings started the year with a “very academic tone.” She thinks it is telling that for the first time in recent years there were no infractions of the underage drinking regulations until nearly 2 1/2 weeks into the semester. Usually, such violations crop up in the first weekend. The students, it appears, were thinking, not drinking. North Carolinians take note.
Jane S. Shaw is president of the John W. Pope Center for Higher Education Policy.