Opinion: Apple Fest Unable to Soothe Malaise at Core of Reed’s Soul
On Tuesday, September 30, I attended the Reed Apple Fest after getting off work. I didn’t originally plan to go, or even know beforehand that the event was going to happen, but I passed by the Student Union while aimlessly wandering across campus like Samuel L. Jackson at the end of his narrative arc in Pulp Fiction. I waited in an irrationally long line and retrieved a miniature vegan apple pie, apple turnover, and apple caramel cupcake, with a cup of hot mulled apple cider. As I stared at the food on the disposable bamboo plate in front of me, I found myself unable to eat. The very idea of eating became repulsive to me. I choked down some cider and found that, while it warmed my throat, it could do nothing to warm my sorrowful soul. I watched the vegan apple pie deflate into its tin mold before my vacant gaze while a breeze from the open back door knocked over most of the contents of my table. Two students sat down next to me and righted most of the toppled signage which offered fun apple facts for the reader. Despite the best efforts of OSE, I believe that events like the Reed Apple Fest can do nothing to soothe the malaise at the core of Reed’s collective soul, and are emblematic of the failed shift to neoliberal governmentality that is actively tearing the college apart.
After the Ohio National Guard killed four students at Kent State University and Mississippi police killed two students at Jackson State in May 1970, students across the United States escalated a national strike that had originally begun in response to the American invasion of Cambodia. Subsequently, President Richard Nixon established the Scranton Commission on Campus Unrest to establish the root causes of so-called unrest on college campuses. To its credit, the commission also included an investigation of the use of lethal force against students, which it found unjustified. However, its main concern had to do with producing recommendations for changes to college and university administrations to deter students from participating in modes of resistance deemed unacceptable by the government. With a complete lack of irony, as the American government slaughtered millions of Vietnamese, Cambodians, and Laotians, the Scranton Commission declared, “Violence [by anti-war students] must stop because it is wrong.” The commission identified the root cause of unrest as a lack of understanding, and produced recommendations for Nixon, the federal government, law enforcement, and university administrations. On student governance, it said, “University governance systems should be reformed to increase participation of students and faculty in the formulation of university policies that affect them. But universities cannot be run on a one man, one vote basis with participation of all members on all issues.” In other words, the recommendation was to capture autonomous student and faculty activists into college governance structures in which they would never be equal partners to administrators. This strategy has prevailed at Reed and across the country for the last half-century and merged with a later shift to business ontology that forces all institutional organization into the funnel of business management. Now, students aren’t just unequal governance partners, they’re customers.
The student engagement model is a product of this approach to managing student bodies. Students don’t get control of the institutional conditions that produce their subjectivities, but they get bread and circuses put on by professionals. The management approach is the same as any shitty human resources department you’ve ever heard about: at the end of the quarter the office gets a pizza party and nobody gets a raise. Or, in our case, at the beginning of autumn the students get some free snacks and placards explaining that a bushel of apples weighs 42-48 pounds and produces 20-24 quarts of applesauce. That’s a good thing to know while the cost of attendance approaches $100,000 a year and the college refuses to even figure out how much of its endowment is invested in the military-industrial complex and the ongoing Israeli-perpetrated, US-backed genocide of Palestinians in Gaza. Our apples are bought with blood money.
I’m not making an argument that we should revive Olde Reed. The student body’s deference to Reed-specific arguments whenever we talk about our desire for greater autonomy, as the institution inconsistently allowed at various points in the past, isolates us from recognizing our shared interests with students at colleges and universities across the world. Admin’s material interests are fundamentally different from those of students, staff, and faculty. They need to avoid liability, persuade wealthy donors, comply with federal regulations, meet accreditation criteria, and ensure positive cash flow. Even a self-styled progressive boss can barely afford to let 44 students get a union contract after an eight-year struggle. Admin’s goals are inextricable from capitalism and state power, even when they put up the limited resistance to specific policies that they legally can. As the college becomes more compliant, the oddball leftist prospies who would traditionally have made up most of each incoming class get less attracted to Reed, and fewer of them commit to going here even when they get in. What students have to decide is whether we want to eat the apple, or spit it out and plant our own seeds.