No scholars appear to turn on the reading lamps at the tables in the dark main hall. Every spring on commencement day a few students boast of never having entered the library during four years of residence at the college. Many students visit the library only to get what they need to write an assigned paper, and then take from the library only as many articles as the professor minimally requires, and never look past the most easily found references. The second college s library is a cathedral in a country whose people no longer pray, preserved at great expense, a museum for tourists, but unused by natives who lack the faith that inspired the builders. At the first college, hiring committees guard against dilution of their doctrine.
All teachers pledge to follow prescribed syllabi.
They count dissent as disloyalty, novelty as heresy, and controversy as a disease that threatens their students development. The teachers believe that the tenderfoots in their charge would surely be lost or devoured if permitted to stray from the path cut and marked by sainted pioneers. They shepherd their students along a narrow trail whose end, they suppose, is wisdom. The second college's faculty has studied and taught at many different colleges. They have traveled, lived, and worked in other countries.