Nikki Giovanni's Speech at VA Tech Convocation

“We are Virginia Tech. We are sad today and we will be sad for quite awhile. WE are not moving on, we are embracing our mourning. We are Virginia Tech. We are strong enough to know when to cry and sad enough to know we must laugh again. We are Virginia Tech. We do not understand this tragedy. We know we did not deserve it but neither does a child in Africa dying of AIDS, but neither do the invisible children walking the night to avoid being captured by a rogue army. Neither does the baby elephant watching his community be devastated for ivory; neither does the Appalachian infant in the killed in the middle of the night in his crib in the home his father built with his own hands being run over by a boulder because the land was destabilized. No one deserves a tragedy. We are Virginia Tech. The Hokier Nation embraces our own with open heart and hands to those who offer their hearts and minds. We are strong and brave and innocent and unafraid. We are better than we think, not quite what we want to be. We are alive to the imagination and the possibility we will continue to invent the future through our blood and tears, through all this sadness. We are the Hokies. We will prevail, we will prevail. We are Virginia Tech. "

am referring to his “plays” alone, and on that basis alone he was obviously passed along with solid grades because the instructors at VT lack any intellectual conscience.

I simply don't think it's possible to conclude that someone can't write a decent term paper because he can't write a decent play, or poem or short story, for that matter. I'm not saying he did write competent papers -- just that I have no way of knowing.

Academic writing is expected to be stiff (though it doesn't have to be), where dialogue isn't. In a calmer mood, contemplating subjects that didn't inspire the kind of bile he spat onto the pages of his plays, he probably paid more attention to his syntax.

As I've mentioned before, maybe on this thread, I used to help out friends at a campus literary rag by screening student submissions. Cho's plays are bad, but far from the worst I've seen. What stands out in them, to me, is the complete lack of plot or character development, and the fact that the dialogue doesn't sound like anyone actually talks. That makes the anger in them all the more disturbing -- it's shapeless, undirected, consuming. None of those is much of a handicap in writing a term paper or essay exam.

The writing is simply not at a university level.

I think you -- and a lot of people -- overestimate university-level writing. A forum like Free Republic, or any message board, blog or newsgroup, attracts people who like to write. Pretty much by definition. There are a lot of folks in the world who don't enjoy writing, or for that matter reading books -- I don't understand those people, but I'm aware they exist.

I know software developers who are smart, interesting people, who can talk about movies or music or politics, but who probably don't read more than one book a year or write anything longer than a memo. I also know suits who write things like "re-engineer our core-processes in a win-win total quality paradigm while maintaining customer focus throughout the enterprise going forward," and they're more dangerous.

I know folks who teach at the college level, and some of the papers they receive are really appalling -- even among students who understand the concepts they're supposed to learn, and who manage in a crude way to communicate that they understand them, the spelling and grammar are enough to make someone who cares about writing cry.

I'm just not willing to jump down the throats of the VT English faculty without reading some of his graded work and seeing what grade it received.

The problem is with the university itself. For reasons too long to go into here, the university has come to believe that everyone should go to college. And, as with every leveling impulse, the standards of the arts and humanities departments have suffered as a consequence. Alan Bloom discussed these failings at length almost two decades ago, but no one actually read the meat of his book so the real problem went undiagnosed. David Stove is equally spot on here:

http://web.maths.unsw.edu.au/~jim/arts.html

I don’t underestimate university writing at all; I’m just pointing out a dirty little secret that observant people have known for years: the humanities departments at most universities are staffed by idiots, who, in turn are teaching nonsense to to students who aren’t really capable of learning anyway. Sure, there is a small rear guard of good profs, but most are nearing retirement, and the rest are demoralized (though Harvey Mansfield is fighting the good fight). And the few students who do belong at college, who have both the aptitude and willingness to learn, are bored to exasperation. Beneath the surface, there are millions of students like Cho, getting passed along with the race to the bottom.

As for the non-readers, if you read a book a year, you cannot talk about politics, or much of anything else, with any real authority. There is a real arrogance to being unwilling to read, as if through some ecstatic union, wisdom simply comes to you in the early evening. I can find man who does not read interesting, but not educated.

You’re right about the suits and their “bizspeak”; they are a menace to clear thinking. But most of that started with the educrats and their pet projects like cultural theory and lit-crit;

Hi Giobruno,

Sorry for the late reply.

Funny... I was in Washington a week and a half ago, and ran into her (I am reasonably sure) at a CVS in Old Town.

I did a research degree in Renaissance poetry, and have awfully high standards. I’m not keen on much that’s modern. Almost everything I read lacks fundamental discipline. Forget cogency or cohesion. People just sling words around, and the permissive or unknowing readership license it, partronize it, applaud it.

Gardner’s book is a perfect one. I am certain you would love it. I don’t know Gardner’s essays, though I am confident that his book has as its foundations all of the writing he did.

Raleigh’s Style can be found on the internet. It begins “Style, the Latin name for an iron pen, has come to designate the art that handles, with ever fresh vitality and wary alacrity, the fluid elements of speech.”

Good reading, and thanks again for the notes earlier.

BPE

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