Inquiring Within

“What to make of college students who play rugby in prom dresses or, in the absence of big-time sport teams, have as a Friday night football cheer: “Schopenhauer, Marx, Kant, Spinoza/Come on Reed, hit ‘em in the nosa!” Or better yet, the all-occasion, all-purpose mantra: “Atheism, Communism, Free Love!” 

Then again, what to make of college students who spend their senior year in the grip of original research and write book-length manuscripts with titles such as “The effect of inorganic shell growth on exciton recombination rates in CdSe quantum dots” or “Persistence, parental cultivation of capital, and racial inequality in elite higher education”? 

At the elite Reed College in Portland, it doesn’t quite matter. What does matter is the uncompromised quest and unvarnished wit – however irreverent – that goes along with it.”