Alena Selezneva
Thomas Lynch, a poet/undertaker (you read that right) is one of my favorite writers, and his 1997 collection, The Undertaking: Life Studies From the Dismal Trade, contains prose that is profound, beautiful and hilarious, often all within one artfully wrought sentence. In one piece, he notices (as essayists and poets are wont to do) as he flies into Los Angeles from his home in Michigan vast amounts of green space. And he gets an idea. The essay is called “The Golfatorium,” and in it he proffers a suggestion: Use all that nice lawn under which people are laid to rest as golf courses.
In delightful fashion, Lynch romps from supermarkets to megachurches to the global mall of the internet and tells us that “the paradigm of dual-purpose, high-utility, multitasking applications had taken hold of the market and my imagination.” The essay goes on to meditate on his dying mother and offer professional considerations on what he and his colleagues, though no one else, call a “good funeral.”
Like all of Lynch’s work, it’s a piece that is witty, provocative and deeply human, from a poet of great heart and mind who spent a career serving the living by caring for the dead.
I started thinking about that essay because I love the idea of the Golfatorium and spend a lot of time talking to presidents who run residential campuses that are increasingly sparsely populated. What to do with all that land, all those dining halls, all those empty beds? As Milton’s Satan put it in Paradise Lost, “Space may produce new worlds.” That little devil is my literary hero.
Lynch was riffing on dual-purpose spaces. I want to take that further and suggest not just repurposing the land, but reimagining how it’s occupied. Some of the best ideas I’ve heard about how to change higher ed have to do with multigenerational learning. There are many reasons I think this makes sense, some of which are based on my own experiences.
As an undergraduate admissions officer at Duke, each time I gave my spiel describing the institution (as I imagined it existed), parents and grandparents always told me they wished they could attend. This wasn’t just about not wanting to let go of their beloved children. They really did long for the intellectual buffet that I promised awaited in the Gothic Wonderland. When book clubs took off, I understood the impulse. College can be wasted on the young.
Even more forcefully, when I began teaching at a regional public university and had in my classes students who ranged in age from not old enough to drink to collectors of Social Security, I saw how much richer the experience can be when you have diversity across a wide range of measures.
Discussions of literature are enhanced when people bring longer lives to the seminar table. In one graduate nonfiction workshop, we had half a class who were right out of college and others who had worked in the world and raised families. One of the discussions I remember most vividly had to do with the ethics of parents writing about their own kids. The youngers said nothing would stop them from doing it once they had given birth. Many of them had, in fact, written quite bitterly about their own parents, so what’s the difference? That’s where the olders added nuance to the conversation.
In addition to the value of all of us learning new vocabulary (students told me recently that my “face card never declines”) and being introduced to popular culture that isn’t widely shared, there is always a great exchange of skills and knowledge. Sometimes the youngers simply take the phone or computer away from the olders (always first politely asking, “May I?”) to get to the right screen. (In truth, I am someone who frequently benefits from this service.) When it comes to navigating other stuff, like how to apply for jobs or finding good deals on car insurance, many of my younger students who are first-gen college and don’t have family who can help are eager to hear advice from the olders.
So, it’s obvious to me that in the classroom, having a range of ages is a good in and of itself. But if we know intergenerational learning works in individual courses, why not scale it up? Why not make entire campuses multigenerational? Most of my friends, now approaching Social Security age, cannot imagine going into a retirement community with a bunch of old people. Some of my friends in their 80s can’t abide the thought.
But to be on a campus where you don’t have to worry about cooking meals, where there’s access to gyms and libraries and cultural events, as well as health care? This is Valhalla for those who have left the world of work but want to keep learning.
Some colleges and universities have already been messing around with this idea, and there’s by no means a one-size-fits-all solution. What I’m proposing here is just a thought experiment inspired by Tom Lynch. Maybe this new educational institution is called a Dormatorium, though that may be too close an intimation of mortality. Or an Evergreen Campus. Or a College Village. A marketing person could come up with a good name.
Board members, some of whom are, let’s face it, already past retirement, might be in favor. Especially since it would appeal to those who, after successful careers, could afford to pay a shit ton of money. We’re not talking about subsidized housing; we’re talking about people who would happily write big checks for the privilege of living somewhere intellectually vibrant. The revenue could help stabilize institutions that are currently hemorrhaging students and dollars.
But not only those. Even institutions flush with cash (the few) that are thinking into the future could benefit from opening their campuses and reimagining what higher education looks like. And faculty, once they’ve had the chance to experience this, may find these classes as invigorating as I have.
Just as there’s no one thing we can point to as a “college experience,” there’s no one way to save the entire landscape of higher ed institutions. But this might work for those brave enough—and with too many empty beds—to try something completely different.
