A Collision of Lowbrow and High

Recently I finished reading David Hajdu’s The Ten Cent Plague, which chronicles the decline of crime and horror comic books in the face of regulation during a bout of 1950s paranoia about juvenile delinquency.  Early in the book Hajdu describes the editorial board  propped up by one company in an effort to claim legitimacy in the eyes of a skeptical public:

“[National and All-American Comics’ Editorial Board included] Pearl S. Buck, Nobel laureate; Josette Frank, staff advisor of the Children’s Book Committee of the Child Study Association; William Moulton Marston, psychologist, sexual theorist, scholar of the principles behind the polygraph machine, and contributor to Family Circle; Colonel C. Bowie Millican, chief reviewer of publications for the U.S. Army; Dr. Robert Thorndyke, a professor in the Department of Educational Psychology at Columbia; and Gene Turney, former heavyweight champion and Shakespeare buff, who once lectured on the board at Yale.  It was a board befitting the comic books: accessible, attention-grabbing, a bit strange, and not quite middlebrow, but rather, a collision of lowbrow and high” (Hajdu 45-46).

While our admission committee can’t boast quite the same level of credentials, a “collision of lowbrow and high,” isn’t far off the mark as a description for a group with similarly eclectic membership.  Of course, I happen to think it’s an asset to have someone who did graduate work on deviant behavior sitting next to someone who’s a dog nut, sitting next to someone whose pink cell phone belies the fact that she’s also spent time camping all over the mainland of Australia.

An insanely broad range of interests, experiences and perspectives helps us make better decisions.  And for that matter, it’s also what distinguishes the classes we enroll.

– Henry Broaddus