Not so long ago, colleges made a promise that sounds a bit strange today. Administrators and faculty promised not just to teach students knowledge and skills, but to make them better people. Our communications department might like to highlight the good Middlebury students do, but few students enter Middlebury thinking they will leave with better values.
Part of this shift is the result of Middlebury’s secularization. We are no longer a religious institution with a clear moral purpose. Students and teachers surely seek to learn about issues related to social justice, but we rarely think about our time at college as focused on moral betterment.
What if we did? I have been asking myself that question recently, trying to figure out if I am a better person than I was when I arrived. Do I care more about the Good than I did freshman fall? Has my understanding of the Good deepened since I arrived at college? Am I a better person? In order, my answers to these questions are 1) no, 2) maybe and 3) yes, I think so. I have always cared deeply about the Good, but my understanding of it (and of the best means of pursuing it) has changed since I arrived here.
In 2011, I would have translated questions about the Good into an important but simplistic political question: Do I care about helping the downtrodden?
I am no longer sure that answers to this question necessarily indicate everything about one’s moral character. You see, when I arrived at Middlebury, I was a staunch leftist. Marxist, very nearly. I cared almost exclusively about helping the oppressed. But I was not a particularly pleasant person. My characteristic intolerance and obnoxiousness had, I submit, roots in my purely political view of morality. I do not mean to suggest a link between any political position and ungraciousness, but if one sees morality as mere ideology, that will affect how one treats people. Primarily, this is a matter of open-mindedness. Let your political assumptions become totalizing, and you will unfairly dismiss thoughtful classmates simply because they do not share your worldview. Strictly adhere to an unaccommodating ethical code, and you will find it difficult to make friends.
It does not so much matter if this code is liberal or conservative. Before the question of what one believes comes the question of how one thinks, and how one thinks is reflected in one’s relationships with others. I am more moral today because I am more open to the idea that I may be wrong. Recognizing my own fallibility makes me more accepting of others’ faults.
I should reassure you that I do believe there are moral positions and immoral positions. The belief that it is right to execute rape victims is an immoral position. If a student at Middlebury justified such a punishment, he would be deservedly ostracized. But I’d venture to guess that most of us are not stoning advocates. Most of the moral disputes at Middlebury are rather more complicated. Thus, they deserve a more generous treatment.
A primary indicator of one’s character is the way one thinks about other people. Are you better at developing and maintaining meaningful relationships than you were when you got here? Are you better at listening to opinions that make you want to punch something? Do you find that new information sometimes causes you to relinquish opinions you had previously considered unimpeachable?
If so, then you are probably a more moral person now than you were then. An affirmative answer to those questions means that you take other people, and their ideas, very seriously. It means you treat others as full human beings.
There is an important corollary point to be made here. Recognizing each other as full human beings means weighing and responding to each other’s opinions. It means challenging each other. It means calling each other out. It means forthright displays of emotions and intellect. It means not deferring to another’s argument for the sake of comity. Respect is ensured by intense argument. A more moral campus is a friendlier campus, but also a more demanding campus.
Those old religious founders of liberal arts institutions were onto something. An academic community which is more interested in the moral character, not the ideological bent, of its members turns out to be a much better place to learn. Something, perhaps, to keep in mind as the dark clouds of political correctness continue to condense overhead.
