Celebrating "Lolita"

Today we celebrate the American publishing on this day in 1958 of the novel Lolita by Vladimir Nabokov. G.P. Putnam's Sons braved fierce criticism from the ruling conservative elite for publishing the tale of European intellectual Humbert Humbert's affair with his teenage step-daughter, Dolores, almost three years after the book was originally published in Paris.

The public outrage was heightened by the fact that Nabokov was himself a European intellectual — from Russia, no less, at the height of the Cold War. American anti-intellectualism and provincialism was as strong then as it is today, and so the publication of Lolita in this country was a victory of enlightenment over the forces of ignorance.

Another remarkable thing about Nabokov was that, while not a native speaker, he still writes flawlessly in English. Hungarian-Jewish playwright George Tabori once remarked, "You don't write in clichés [when you write in your second language] because you don't know them." Nabokov certainly proved this, both in his writing style and in his choice of subject matter.

When a student dies

There is a hole in my heart for Justin Cosby, the young Cambridge man who was shot and killed recently in a Harvard dorm.

Justin was my student at Salem State College during the semester that just ended. He was sitting in my Introduction to Communications class a few weeks ago. I still have e-mail from him on my computer; he still speaks to me from saved voicemail messages.

In class, Justin was delightful: he was bright, thoughtful, polite, and smiled easily.

Now, he smiles at me from the pages of the newspaper, his image frozen in a high school graduation photo, his face captured somewhere between the boyhood he’d just finished and the manhood he’ll never experience.

Like many at Salem State, Justin was a working class student, possibly the first in his family to attend college. And like many of his classmates, he was self-reliant in a way that more privileged kids at more elite institutions are not: he worked, he commuted to school, he had significant real-world responsibilities outside of his studies.

Because so many of my students have similarly busy schedules, I make myself available in ways convenient to them. We meet outside of posted office hours; we text each other; we’re friends on facebook. I strongly encourage my students to be in touch, while they are in my classes and afterward.

I do this because, as their professor, I take personal responsibility for not just their academic development, but for their professional and personal development, as well. They are my charges; I am their mentor.

When I first started at Salem State in 2003, I was struck by the high degree of anxiety, depression and dysfunctional behavior among my students. Worse, there seemed to be very little institutional recognition of this fact, and no discernable organized efforts to address it.

This unsophisticated view of the psyche of the student body stemmed, I believe, from the college’s president at the time, Nancy Harrington, and her cohort of senior-level administrators. They viewed education as a product, not a process, and the students as consumers, somehow outside the institution, not its reason for being. As a result, they made no real effort to make the students feel like part of the college, nor did they try to understand students as anything other than names on a class roster or, perhaps, numbers on a bursar’s ledger.

And then they wondered why retention and graduation rates were so low.

I have known a handful of faculty and staffers who cared enough about students’ emotional health to do something. I’ve seen professors take the time to counsel or soothe a troubled student, and staffers make space available for a group of students to meet informally. Such individual acts of kindness, however rare, went a long way in helping students overcome their alienation.

For my part, I worked to create nurturing environments: in the classroom; when advising the school paper, by making the newsroom a place where students could collaborate on something larger than themselves; and by leading a meditation group, where all members of the college community might find comfort and insight.

Some students have said how my efforts helped them to stay in school, or find a job, or get through a difficult time, or make a change in their life. I’m grateful to them for accepting my help and am happy to call them friends. Other students found a way without my help, and I’m grateful to know them and am happy to call them friends, too. Justin is the first student I’ve lost.

Upon reflection, Justin’s attendance in class was spotty, which can be a sign of a student experiencing difficulties. He usually called me when he was going to be out, though — he seemed to have a lot of car trouble this term — so I didn’t think much of his absences. What’s more, when he next came in, he would apologize for missing class and vow to make up the work. To his credit, he mostly did.

For their final projects, students were making videos. Justin’s partner told me Justin, fearing he’d missed too much work, had dropped the class. Too bad, I said; if he’d only talked to me, we could have worked something out.

I don’t believe he didn’t call because I’m so unapproachable. Rather, I’m afraid Justin had a hard time believing anyone at Salem State College cared enough about him to make an accommodation.

I don’t know if I could have changed Justin Cosby’s trajectory. I am saddened by and take some responsibility for the fact that there will be no more opportunities to reach out to him. I grieve for him and have compassion for those who knew and loved him. The particulars of his death — whether it was, in that overused phrase, a drug-related shooting — don’t matter. What matters is that we remain committed to helping students follow a sound path.

The weather and global warming

People should stop whining about the weather and blame who's really responsible for global warming:

DAMN YOU, AL GORE!

Before you and your gloom-and-doom "explanations," we could believe bad weather was just cyclical. Now it's a sign of impending extinction. Thanks a lot, Al.