Final Banquet 2012

The year ends with a final banquet - a better than usual meal in a nicer venue - with lots of tributes, playful jabs, and hugs.

 

Each group is different; this one marked by diversity and a laid back nature; the house ran smoothly.  The significantly larger numbers - 64 - seemed to create a social inertia, weighing down individual, playfully rogue elements from surfacing.

The boundaries seem more defined between 19 yr old culture and us somehow, which we chalk up to the socially stratified nature of Facebook.

 

The house is also a tighter ship with no non-Pepperdine members, ie all about the students; everything, including us, part of an elaborate support structure. I'm curious how our role will play out back in Malibu: more or less vital? The evening is capped by a video, which will be used as a promo back on campus; the focus being on travel, friendship, self-discovery.

 

I am generally skeptical of the American way of creating university subcultures, compared to most European contexts where students become part of a city, renting a room in someone's house - not a dorm full of possibilities.

This is my lack of experience speaking, I realize, as profs like me attended big research institutions, then teach at small privates. Most profs who teach at Pepperdine-like schools got their degrees at big grad schools, seeking to return to a life they knew as undergrads. Cornell felt intimate compared to Minnesota, but my college years were spent at L'Abri, where family and the table shaped identity.

 

Undeniably, there's a lot of talent and hope - our contribution to world culture - being cultivated here; our college students are both younger and more mature, a direct result of cultivating a broad pool of an educated elite relative to the population, rather than vocationally weeding them out. Kinda meets us where we are.


This year's banquet also had a talent show dimension. Jack brought the house down, accompanied by Madeline, his teacher & performed "Pelle a Fromage," where Yehudi Menuhin meets Jimi Hendrix.