Observations on JMC: Dave Brigode ('73)

sitemap Observations on JMC: Dave Brigode ('73)

Group Memory

Legacy

A FEW OBSERVATIONS ON JUSTIN MORRILL COLLEGE

David Brigode, JMC '73

I attended JMC at MSU from the fall of 69 to spring of 73. I lived in Snyder- Phillips the first two years. I graduated from JMC with an Area of Concentration in Social Psychology. 30 years later I attended the first JMC reunion back in East Lansing. A Web site of remembrances and comments was proposed. This is my contribution to the collective memory bank.

JMC at MSU was a culmination of post-WWII, 60's idealism. In this era of cutbacks in public education, job-oriented curricula, and emphasis on the bottom line, the concept that a middle class, publicly funded Big 10 State University would consciously attempt to replicate a small, liberal arts college such as is seen in the Ivy League or in a small private elite institution seems alien. As a freshmen I consistently found myself in small classes of 8-12 people, taught by full professors. Topics included encounter groups, social stratification, symbolic logic, cross-cultural anthropology, a great deal of independent study, and a general approach much deeper than the average university courses. The fact that most classes were in the basement of Snyder meant that course discussions continued into the lobby, the cafeteria, and dorm rooms late into the night. We had ample opportunity to pursue our interests through studies both within JMC and in the University at large. I took a university advanced chemistry class just to exercise my brain. I also took courses in Chinese calligraphy; independent study in Astrophysics; and enrolled in a class in agricultural mechanics in which I learned how to arc-weld. It was very common for people to take advantage of the JMC experience for their first two years. The bulk of the program was front-loaded in that manner; one could then transfer into a specific university program for the last two years. I believe that the number of people who benefited from the JMC experience far outnumber those who technically graduated with JMC on their sheepskin. Some people expressed concern about the JMC Pass/NoPass grading system; However, I have never in my life been asked for my college GPA.

The Cultural Setting of the Times

My personal theory of the 60's is multi-layered. First, it was a clash between traditional societal structures going back thousands of years with new ways of living derived from new technology, personal freedom, and economic affluence. The civil rights movement came of age in this era, leading to respect and rights not only for Blacks but also Hispanics and Asians. This non-violent social change model spawned the Women's movement; the Gay rights movement; the Environmental movement; the New Age philosophy; urban community organizing like tenants rights; the anti-nuclear movement (which won); and general empowerment of the previously disenfranchised.

I don't think that what I observed around me was necessarily that crazy, or that students now a days are more personally conservative. It was a time of polarization and change, like a storm front resulting from the meeting of hot and cold climates. If you remember that for many high schools in the 60's the biggest issue was guys growing Beatle haircuts, then you realize in hindsight what an innocent time that was.

My Fellow MSU / JMC Students

Most of the kids I went to school with seemed to come from predominantly middle class backgrounds. Suburban Detroit; small town mid-Michiganders; Central US out- of-state students; the obligatory NY/New Jersey transplants. Their grandparents raised families through the Depression; their parents came back from WWII and built subdivisions, freeways, school systems, and our modern infrastructure. MSU went from 4000 students as a Cow College in 45 to over 45,000 25 years later as an international mega-versity. In-state tuition was $13/credit; 4 years of college was affordable.

The Draft

Students fully enrolled and maintaining an adequate GPA held a 2-S draft deferment. If you dropped out or flunked out you could get sent to Vietnam. They held a lottery to choose draft numbers based on your birthdate in 1951. My number was 28; my friend with a birthday a day later was 364. I was fortunate to maintain the minimum numbers of credit hours for the maximum amount of time. I graduated 6/10/73; the draft expired 6/30.

Was service in the military, and injury and death in combat, disproportionately a burden for people who couldn't go to college? Absolutely, and don't let anybody tell you differently.

JMC Student Teaching

In spring of 73, the college offered selected senior student-taught classes for credit. The student instructors got paid the gigantic sum of $200 each. I still have some of the course descriptions, which are a window on the times:

UNDERSTANDING CHINA Barb Haimes: China was an absolute mystery to everybody. America had live TV from the surface of the moon before we had it from the Peoples Republic. All the Chinese professors in the US were pro-Taiwan. The last I heard from Barbara she was a gourmet Chef in San Francisco.
MODES OF FANTASY IN THE TWENTIETH CENTURY Gary Cohn and Dan Mishkin: Comic books and the heroic fantasy genre. I believe they published comics for years afterwards in New York.
WHY PHOTOGRAPHY ? Jim Tisdel and John Rickerby: "The illiterate of the future will be the people who can not take photographs."

T-Groups

Many people in JMC went thru this process. I personally found that the T- Groups/Encounter Group I took in the Winter of 70 to have been very influential. Being basically an overeducated, intellectualized, Jesuit high school nerd, the concept of blowing out your feelings in front of other people and then putting your emotions back together again was very scary and liberating. I can also see how you could have a very bad experience under different circumstances.

Miscellaneous Recollections

Music
Concerts: Fall of 69 "The Association"; Spring of 70 "Jefferson Airplane" Quelle difference.
Dorm rooms had the Moody Blues (Days of Future Passed) , King Crimson, James Taylor, Grateful Dead tapes, Santana (Abraxas) , All the music from Woodstock, Led Zeppelin, Late Beatles, Rolling Stones (Beggars Banquet); Jimi Hendrix, Janis Joplin, the Who (Live at Leeds), the Doors. J.S. Bach late at night in the winter. FireSign Theater. Jefferson Airplane (Volunteers)
Clothes: Hippie stuff. I don't remember people being that lavish, because we were all starving students. Since this was Michigan, not California, people had boots rather than sandals. I seem to remember many people foreshadowing the Seattle grunge look with open flannel shirts, and work boots. Jeans had to have more patches than denim material. Women, when not wearing jeans and sweaters, had the peasant dresses or Mexican blouses, with no bras, of course. Some folks regularly sported a political button or an armband.
The computer major whose room was furnished with only his bunk, his textbooks, and a giant sound system; playing The WHO at maximum volume.
The MSU bookbags hanging outside numerous other dorm room windows in the winter for cooling beers.
The poor exchange student from Turkey who lived at the end of our hall and thought we were from outer space.
The "grill rats" who hung out in the basement snack shop perpetually.
Frisbee forever !
Philosophies, influences: "MEANINGFUL AND RELEVANT"; "CROSSCULTURAL"; Be Here Now; Lord of the Rings; Linguistic Relativism; Encounter Groups; Cultural anthropology; Marxism (both Karl and Groucho); the Making of a Counter-Culture/ the Social Construction of Reality; the Whole Earth Catalog; Jungian psychology; Monopoly Capital; Soul on Ice; The Student as Nigger; Herman Hesse; "WHAT IS REALITY?!"
I took a computer course Spring 1971. At that time, you spent hours at a keyboard typing out cardboard punchcards in order to do pathetically simple Fortran formatting. You then took it to the University mainframe and got back your printout two days later. One misplaced comma and you had to start over again. At the end of the term I remember having problems with an assignment and taking it to the TA, who tried to correct it and ran it under his coded access. The next day I got back this gigantic printout stack two feet high: it evidently got into some kind of loop and just ran and ran. Rather than let all that paper be wasted, we took it back to Snyder, laid it out on the floor, and invited everyone to add artwork and stuff onto it all night. The result was a sort of collage hundreds of feet long, entitled "Brainflush" and posted as an exhibit in Phillips basement.
I took a Sociology class in fall of 71. It was independent study. At one point we drove to visit somebody's friends at Princeton for a long weekend. That was educational to see students like us (not) with their dorm that looked like a plush hotel. The rich are different.
I got hired to do a Model Cities door-to-door market research survey in North Lansing on whether to build a shopping center there. I was the janitor in several bars including Lizard's on Abbott. I cleaned the kitchens at the Jack Tar Hotel downtown from 2-6 am. I got hired the day they opened at the Bagle-Fragel Shoppe as a bagel-baker. Never had much money at all the whole time I was a student; used to take my girl friend on a date for nickel root beers down in the grille.
It's not often acknowledged that the JMC approach to liberal education was aimed at fostering 'grounded' results rather than esoteric studies. We were explicitly told the goal was to learn how to learn and act rather than simply accumulate knowledge in a particular field. I think this is the point in JMC English professor Glenn Wright's comment that, "JMC students have an intellectual commitment to anti-intellectualism."

Things I Might Wish Had Gone Differently

Too many distractions: I sometimes wonder what it would have been like to have pursued my studies in an environment that hadn't surrounded me with peripheral 'noise' like riots, dissension, the reality shift of cultures back then, and a major level of overall chaos. On the other hand, every young person has to go through a reality-shift when they grow up, become an adult, and generally sort out the wide variety of experiences life has to offer.
Alienation: Even though we had excellent professors, I really did not bond or hang with them. I didn't trust anybody over 30, in the phrase of the times. A lost opportunity.
Elitism: Some JMC students thought of themselves as better than the rest of the MSU students. Some went so far as to express contempt for the straight world. Part of this was teen-age rebellion.
I now appreciate the effort of the taxpayers of Michigan to support a system they could not necessarily benefit from themselves. Certainly, the collapse of the Michigan economy in the mid-70's demonstrated that society was not yet ready for the Aquarian Millenium, and that the idealists actually needed those assembly-line jobs they'd had been trying to free themselves from.

My Life and Career after JMC

After graduation in 1973, I remained around Lansing for a number of months, and then headed to San Francisco. I arrived there around Xmas of 1973 with $35 in my pocket, and stayed for 23 years.

Supporting myself as a housepainter of the Victorian houses around town, I worked for ten years as a community organizer on housing issues. I founded the San Francisco Tenants Union; organized rent control campaigns, and generally helped achieve real progress while working with minimal resources.

By 1984, I had earned a Master's in Public Administration from San Francisco State and was managing non-profit affordable housing. Ten years ago I became a non- profit housing developer of apartments for homeless and mentally ill people.

In 1990 I finally got married, and have 4 children. In 1997, I moved north 48 miles to the small town of Sonoma in the Wine Country.

I am currently the Housing Director for Sonoma County People for Economic Opportunity, overseeing emergency and transitional shelters for homeless families; case management for homeless families; emergency rental assistance programs; Fair Housing enforcement; and affordable housing development.

Where are They Now?

I have observed that many of my friends have become university professors and researchers. To my knowledge, I can drop the names of Notre Dame, Wayne State, Vermont, Dartmouth, and Colorado. There seem to be a variety of attorneys as well, scattered around the country. Some people remained in Lansing, but not many. An uncertain number, like myself, went into public service, working for non-profits or local governments. I would like to hear more about this.

I do not know how history will judge this era, or the roles we played. However, I perform my duty in leaving these recollections for others to sort through.

David Brigode
Sonoma. CA
October 1999

DBrigode@comcast.net