WFHB Bloomington Community Radio
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Today we engage with a masterpiece…literally: scholar Steve Volan’s Master’s thesis, Gownsburg: The Campus as Municipal Phenomenon. Volan has also been a City Council member in Bloomington, Indiana since 2004. In Gownsburg, the politician and the geographer seek common ground in order to describe what the University does well – but more importantly, to help us see how far afield that institution has strayed when it comes to democracy and civic engagement.
Volan’s abstract for his thesis begins this way: “The American Residential college campus is a doppelgänger city, with its own idiosyncratic laws, governance, and economics. Two key facets distinguish the campus from a typical settlement: one, it is built by a central authority with a singular purpose for a narrow demographic; and two, it is built as remotely as possible, apart or away from existing cities, and strives to remain separate from any incorporated place even when surrounded by urbanity.”
In our conversation today we discuss the ways campuses were often designed by one controlling intelligence, to suit a specific ideology, and purpose-built to raise young men to become beacons of that design. To achieve this, the campus would be located in nature, away from the corrupting elements of city life – elements identified as women and alcohol.
But we begin with the police and the Greek word Polis – as we try to understand the distinctions between the city and the state and how the governing powers of each are not well understood and at the very least not clear to the demos, the people under their authority.
Our opening song is “Graduation” by Henry Flynt off of the 2001 release Graduation and Other New Country and Blues Music which collects material recorded between 1975 and 1979. Henry Flynt is an American philosopher, musician, writer, activist, and artist connected to the 1960s New York avant-garde.
GUEST
Steve Volan is the District VI Representative on the Bloomington, Indiana City Council (2004 – Present) and author of Gownsburg: The Campus as Municipal Phenomenon (unpublished Master’s thesis).
RELATED
The Mask of the Public Good: What the University Costs Communities (Interchange with Davarian Baldwin)
Gownsburg: The Messy Child Born of a Dysfunctional Couple (2016 Interchange with Steve Volan)
These Hollowed Halls: Business Creep(s) in the University (Interchange with Michael Burawoy)
MUSIC
Henry Flynt – “Graduation”
Talking Heads – “(Nothing But) Flowers”
Compost – “Country Song”
Henry Flynt – “Solo Virginia Trance”
CREDITS
Producer & Host: Doug Storm
Executive Producer: Kade Young
