Can Honest People Get the Job Done?

SWNID, Mrs. SWNID and Daughter of SWNID just returned from a weekend trip to the Berkshires in western Massachusetts to visit Williams College freshman Son of SWNID. The entire time was a delight to all.

Most entertaining was a debate between two members of the mathematics faculty on the question of the most important number, e or pi. I sincerely hope that the college puts the video of this lecture on its web site, as it is perhaps the funniest thing that the SWNID family has witnessed live and in person.

But the more interesting matter was the extemporaneous address to the parents by Williams president Morton Shapiro. His gutsy, nothing-to-hide honesty was just about the last thing that we expected from the president of what is arguably the number one "little ivy." From admitting that the student center had been pretty miserable for a long time to confessing that the problem of student drinking keeps him up at night to implying that the college had inappropriately surrendered some of its in loco parentis responsibilities to admitting that while 80% of students at other elite institutions say that their academic advising was poor, 85% say that at Williams, Shapiro spoke without notes and without guile. If his address had a theme, it was: we'll never get everything right, but we're trying to identify some areas for improvement and we're trying to make some measurable improvement over time.

In other words, Shapiro is able at Williams to be the president that Larry Summers has tried to be at Harvard. Summers, of course, was summarily neutered by the Harvard faculty. Shapiro, by contrast, seems to be in possession of all his faculties.

Also noteworthy were Shapiro's repeated references to his teaching, both in the past and present tenses. He refers to himself as a member of the faculty. Not once did he mention any of his own activities other than teaching. Not raising money, not making decisions, not "casting vision."

This raises an interesting question. Can presidents of Christian colleges be as frank as Dr. Shapiro?

This is not to imply that any are dishonest, only that their public discourses may tend toward marketing rhetoric rather than soul-baring honesty about what everyone in the room already knows to be true. When Christian college presidents (and lesser lights, for that matter) speak about their institutions, listeners know that their institutions are underfunded relative to most other institutions of higher learning, and that they offer narrower options for students and less prestige for graduates. Everyone also knows that many students violate behavioral standards and many graduates do not live out Christian ideals that they were taught or pursue the church-related vocations for which they were trained.

Of course, many do fulfill the institutional mission, and any institution is entitled and expected to talk about its successes, not its failures. And the fact that Christian colleges get anything done with the money they have is testimony to the power of God.

But some of us felt a fresh wind for about 45 minutes in Chapin Hall on Saturday morning. And we wonder whether the same breeze can blow in other places.