There are the ever-present know-it-all pundits who thrive on the sounds of their own vocal boxes. You know these students as soon as you see them-or rather, hear them. Their thick billows of rhetoric blow in seemingly endless orbits as they make perilous assumptions, make circular reasoning, hurl around arbitrary and meaningless isms, unduly reference "big thinkers" and esoteric phrases, leave out crucial background information or just plain go ad hominem. These storm makers also thrive in the jolt forums. They live off drama, controversy and misrepresentation.
Less threatening, but just as pitiful, are the perennial Amherst brain drains that drown you in a whirlpool of zero-sum excuses, feign apathy or sit silently. They are too ill-informed on issues to speak up or ask questions; they shun the much dreaded critical thinking process or they sit hypnotized by the stifling catacombs of rhetoric that classroom titans use to daze them with. These students are the ones who are lost in class and will never seek out help.
Then there are the venomous lecturer-sophists who actually have thought critically and know their stuff thoroughly (save the accuracy of their facts and premises) but are hard of hearing. These troops are usually among the ranks of academia displaying their proverbial intellectual fangs at anyone who dares offer opposition. They are subscribers to absolute truths-and you guessed it: they have a monopoly on those truths. Their rhetorical catechism is so tightly structured that even the sharpest of the polemicists have a hard time penetrating. Their oral tapestries twirl in a dizzy trance as they go on and on, class in and class out. These "fangsters" will growl back at the rhetorical bong hitters at every point of contention but it often turns more or less into a shouting match of intellectual dustbowls. When these two go at it, such as during the war protests, all that is promised is a whole lot of dense smoke (lecturer-sophists) and loud firecrackers (rhetorical drama queens).
And the "know-nothing/do-nothings" just suffocate in the resulting furor. Make no mistake about it, fangsters have such strong views and can argue their points so tightly that they seem as if they really know everything. But they are too driven to preach to the converted like the folks above who relish the sound of their larynxes. Their omniscience allows them to locate and intimidate every lost soul who hears them, but their impenetrable layers can be challenged at each level. They must be combated with arguments just as tightly developed as theirs, and the "ultimate truths" will dissipate. Rays of sunshine will glow from the heavenly nexus of erudition, spirited discussion and engagement that is the very essence of the Amherst ethos. At least the fangsters have heart though. They will never listen to anything they think is ill-founded or allow reckless articles to be written without response. They know what's at stake. But they will sink you into the deep of their quicksands of sophistry if you're not prepared to deal with them with accurate fact and reflection.
What can the Amherst community do to get rid of through these dark clouds of sophistry? Must the issue cartel-sters, intellectual mob bosses, massive anti-intellectual cults and disciples of apathy be the principle meteorological variables that dictate the idyllic intellectual forecast the admission officers and faculty have in mind for us? I think not. What we need this year is a newer and more stubborn breed of "fang-bangers" who will bust the hideous fangs of those dogmatic canines that are dominating political discourse nowadays. As the rhetoricians bark and growl, look them calmly in the eye and talk to them. Drive out the clouds by following the arguments and countering them and never the person.
Once those fangs are destroyed, all that will be left is the hot air for what it mostly is-wasted breath. We also need a new set of intellectual spelunkers who will explore the dark and webby caves of on-campus rhetoricians who repeat the same thing so much that their intellectual halitosis has become the dominant accepted discourse around campus on any given issue. Those hallow caves must be exposed and the "truths" shall rise like a phoenix out of the ashes of intellectual despair. The liberal scalawags, wishy-washy proselytized and conservative hijackers must be brought down to the humble hearth of civil discussion, engagement and willingness to research further and consider alternate viewpoints. Having strong views is fine but listening is becoming a rare commodity amongst college students these days. We may be able to expand upon our views. The irascible know-it-alls and stormed-out "know-nothingers" will come closer to a better day of crisp understanding and mutual respect. But as it now stands, the ears of the "know-nothing" class have been so deafened by the constant blitzkriegs of rhetorical thunder, their eyes so blinded by effulgent soundbites, and their senses so numbed by the constant pelting of formulaic hailstorms that one can hardly blame them for sitting silent. Indeed, their silence resounds.
In the aftermath of these uninspiring sea storms of grayness that we know are obvious truths-it just rained really hard (someone was shouting instead of discussing)-or make a conclusion that cannot be supported by false or questionable premises, we often think there just is nothing to explore but horizons of jargon and ultimate truths. We should seek ultimate questions, instead. When people start trudging through the thick billows and searching for actual substance beyond the hot clouds and smoke screens and start asking questions, we may actually have better sunnier days ahead. Otherwise, the sea storms of reckless conclusions will leave us all seasick and will sink us even further down the deep abysses of the big mouths' intellectual ravines where only their voices echo.
On an endnote, we shouldn't pity ourselves too much. What we are seeing is a much larger and deeply rooted trend nationwide from Congress to campus where people are averse to discussing or exploring an issue with an open mind. People either are too caught up in their own opinions to really communicate with each other or they are misinformed on the very basics; people are so burning to get their opinions on the table that they begin to develop listener's block or they focus so much on what their rebuttals will be that they never truly hear the other side. They drop reckless assumptions and misshape debates on current events. But we, Amherst comrades, are supposed to be better than the rest, right? Be more open-minded but more assertive simultaneously. A hard line to walk, surely, but it can happen. It may not be in keeping with the zeitgeist of contemporary America but it certainly falls well in line with the Amherst mission. I plan for partly cloudy skies this year at Amherst if people take my advice, but the sad fact is you can plan a pretty picnic but you can't predict the weather. Don't rain on our parade another year.