Carolina Alumni Review - May/June 2007

THE ROOTS OF SOCIAL PROTEST

PROJECT HINTON ■ EXPERIMENT AL COLLEGE

The Experimental College, in which students, faculty and chaplains shaped an alternative curriculum, took wing in 1967 when David Kiel ’ 68, at right, persuaded Student Government to fund the program for noncredit courses. The idea spawned a residential learning program, and the dean of students located it as far away from the mainstream as one could go in those days — Hinton James (top, at left). Project Hinton opened with 136 students: 85 men and 51 women, on the top two floors.

PHOTOS: FIRST, GAA FILES; SECOND, 1968 YACKET Y YACK

floors. There was also an extensive support group: four Faculty Fellows (Chuck Wright, Towny Ludington, Paula Goldsmid and me); a resident supervisor and graduate assistant; a graduate fellow, Elliot Kent ’ 78; and three resident assistants.

Ten courses were offered (for credit) in Project Hinton. I taught one of them. More precisely, I taught the seminar that several students and I had created. In April, Kay Gurley (now Goldstein) ’ 71, Richie Leonard ’ 71, Charles Jeffress ’ 70 and I sat for two hours at Harry’s Deli to brainstorm ideas of what we would want to learn. “Extremism in America” is what we ended up with, a historical perspective on the tumult surrounding us in the late ’60s. I developed the reading list, the students rounded up other students, and in the fall we met once a week to learn collaboratively.

Project Hinton was more than courses. It was “a living-learning experiment.” A community. There was a government. On Wednesday evenings, everyone convened in Chase Cafeteria to discuss problems, programs and anything else on our minds. There was a leader — a volunteer who served for a month until someone else volunteered. That “instability” drove the dean crazy, but we didn’t believe in a hierarchy of power. There was a newspaper reporting news, gossip, birthdays and whatever struck the editor’s fancy. There was folk singing on the balcony

on warm evenings and intense discussions about politics, the war and the Beatles. And, of course, there were romances.

In the words of one faculty fellow after one year’s experience at Project Hinton, “It is an attempt to get certain relationships right: between formal learning and other ways of learning [such as] eating, friendship, love, becoming political; between young men and women; between someone paying to learn and someone paid to teach; between a learning community and the University.”

Aftermath

All this happened in 10 years. A minute of history.

So much urgency and collision in so short a time. A tsunami of change. When it passed, I felt a certain relief. Now I could focus again on teaching and writing and personal life. But I also felt a letdown. I lost that sense of waking up in the morning and wondering: “What today?!” More important, I lost that exhilarating belief that I/we could make a difference in the world.

What difference did all those protests make? Back in 1968, my course ended with the optimistic prophecy of “toward a great society.” In 2007, I see a mixed outcome.

Speaker ban: When incoming students were asked to read Nickel and Dimed by socialist Barbara Ehrenreich, some legislators threatened to intervene. They didn’t. And Chancellor Moeser defended free speech.

Experimental College and Project Hinton:

Incoming students can choose from among more than 150 seminars on exciting topics taught by professors. But they also sit in classes alongside 300 other students and listen to professors lecturing nonstop for 50 minutes.

Civil rights movement: A significant proportion of students as well as faculty are black. We have a thriving African and Afro-American Studies program.

But almost all the people who serve food in Lenoir and clean the classrooms are black, and many believe they are underpaid.

Antiwar: The U.S. withdrew from Vietnam in 1973. But the U.S. is now mired in Iraq, and in the face of public distaste for the war, the president has ordered an increase in troops.