Defending the Romance of the Common Book
A strong common book program creates a united campus and community culture.
Hundreds of colleges and universities recognize that a common book program is a good thing, the National Association of Scholars and Mitch Daniels notwithstanding. Solid data to defend that statement is hard to come by, but I know it is true. Campuses began common book programs because of research by George Kuh that indicated that shared intellectual experiences lead to stronger student learning and increased student retention and graduation rates. There are several ways to create shared intellectual experiences for students, of course, but a strong common book program has a unique value. In addition to its role in encouraging student academic success, its value is in what the program contributes to the campus climate as a whole. A strong common book program creates a united campus and community culture. It helps establish a campus identity.
The primary goal of a common book program is to help students connect with each other and with faculty through discussions that model what academic inquiry can be like. A common book program gives a campus community an early opportunity to model with incoming students how to have civil, respectful conversations with people who do not share their perspectives or experiences. It demonstrates to our students that the big problems facing our world are complex, intractable, and can only be solved through the application of all of our talents and disciplinary knowledge. Although supporting our students’ success is the expressed reason why universities run common book programs, the full value of a strong common book program is only seen if we look at the broader campus context.
Before I go any farther, I want to say that I am not completely unrealistic about common book programs. I have two daughters who both attended public universities that had common book programs. One daughter found her institution’s book tedious and simplistic. Although she dutifully read the text and participated in a discussion of it, the experience did nothing to endear the institution to her. My other daughter looked at me pityingly after she received her school’s common book and said, “You know I am not going to read it, right?” I don’t doubt that many students have reactions like my daughters’.
But I don’t care. I still love common book programs and am convinced that they are worth the effort and the cost. In addition to their ability to create a sense of community for first-year students, they remind the entire campus community that a university is to be a place of learning, of debate, and of the civil exchange of ideas. And this fall I was reminded that even in 2020 when every gathering is virtual, a common book program can still unite us and make us proud to be part of a community of higher education.
At my current institution, Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU), the common book is alive and integrated into the curriculum. I can’t take credit for its success even though it is sponsored by my college — it was thriving before I arrived two and a half years ago. In recent years it has taken on the opioid problem (Sam Quinones’ Dreamland), childhood immigration (Valeria Luiselli’s Tell Me How It Ends), and eviction (Matthew Desmond’s Evicted). Incoming first-year students receive a copy of the book at new student orientation, they participate in book discussion groups prior to the start of fall classes, and the book is used in their first-semester freshman seminar/composition course. A slate of programming occurs on campus during the fall (organized by a committed and well-organized team). Community organizations relevant to the theme of the selected book also sponsor events and reading groups for area citizens. The program culminates with a large public lecture by the book’s author. I am thrilled that I get to be connected to the program.
Recently VCU’s 2020 common book author, Carol Anderson, came to campus (virtually) to discuss One Person, No Vote: How Voter Suppression is Destroying Our Democracy (Bloomsbury, 2018). In addition to a couple of small online events with members of the Richmond community and with VCU students, Dr. Anderson’s third virtual event was a presentation to our large campus audience, conducted via Zoom and livestreamed on Facebook.
Although I knew that Dr Anderson was an engaging speaker and that her topic was extremely relevant since we were just a few weeks away from the highly contested presidential election, my expectations honestly were fairly low. We had never held a common book author visit remotely and didn’t know how our campus would respond to the virtual format. Actually, when we had realized back in the summer that the pandemic would prevent us from holding a public author lecture this fall, we wondered if the program would survive. The author lecture is usually held in our basketball arena with a large audience of both campus and community members. Typically it is preceded by a reception at which the author can meet with faculty members and community leaders who have sponsored programming related to the year’s book. The lecture and question and answer period are typically followed by a long line of students waiting to have their copy of the book signed by the author. I couldn’t see how we could replicate the excitement of the in-person event on Zoom.
I needn’t have worried. Dr. Anderson was accessible and engaging, reminding members of the audience of the basic argument of One Person, No Vote and going beyond it with additional information and stories so that even the audience members who were very familiar with her work were enlightened. Although it might have seemed to some that her book represented a biased and partisan perspective, Dr. Anderson’s talk was based in historical facts and cast in a tone of hope — it moved from the execution of Maceo Snipes in 1946 for having the audacity to exercise his right to vote, to the current moment and the actions being taken by 18–29 year-olds to mobilize in support of social justice issues and voters’ rights. It was hopeful. It was exhilarating. Despite the rancorous and divisive political climate of our current cultural moment, it was unifying. By the end of her presentation, I know that we all, in our separate rooms in front of our separate computers, felt connected and inspired to protect the rights of all U.S. voters to exercise their franchise. I am confident that everyone on the Zoom webinar gave her a virtual standing ovation.
That final moment which we couldn’t share in person — the crowd of more than a thousand on their feet applauding the common book author and her ideas — is a key moment of the program. That moment shows everyone how central the community of ideas is to the life of a university. We see at that moment the possibility of collegiality. Our students experience a moment in which their pose of disdain drops, and they appreciate the intellect and rigor that goes into taking on one of our society’s wicked problems. Jaded faculty who are typically caught up in the cynicism and exhaustion of class prep, learning outcomes assessment, research deadlines, and seemingly endless committee meetings are reminded of the reasons why they joined the academy in the first place. Community members, who may resent the amount of traffic that having a university in town creates or who may feel the university overwhelms the local community, are reminded of the benefits of having a campus in the neighborhood. That final moment of applause is transformative and rejuvenating for everyone present. It is a reminder that all of us, not just our students, benefit from common intellectual experiences.
Before I came to VCU I was at a university that tried to start a common book program. In fact, I was present when the program began and I was the lucky individual who got to explain the idea to the faculty senate. I asked the faculty to think about football (this institution was a large public research-intensive and football-intensive university). During the fall, I reminded faculty, everyone on campus and in the local community was part of football culture: faculty were teaching football players, marching band members, and cheerleaders in their classes; faculty, staff, and community members tailgated even if they weren’t going to the games; people who hated football paid attention to kick-off time because they knew that once the game began, traffic in town would vanish and they could run their weekend errands (to stores which would have sound systems tuned to the game), and merchants knew the value of football to their revenue. On Monday mornings, everyone knew what the score had been.
That’s what I want for a common book program. I want there to be one book a year that everyone on campus is aware of — whether they read it, resented it, teach it, attended events about it, or can’t figure out why on earth the book was selected. I want people to feel the book in the air, to allude to it in their conversations and classrooms, to talk about it with friends over lunch.
That’s what we have at VCU: a strong common reading program that reminds faculty as well as students why we came to the university and why we value the academy. It is worth the effort.
I know I am right. No matter what my daughters think.
