Harrison

My time at DS overlapped with Charlie’s (comment above) and you’d have been unlikely during my time there to meet anyone at the school who’d been to the cottontail ranch for sport or who would treat you the way you described. (I’m not doubting your story, but assuming it’s true, that must have been an unlucky year to visit.) Your description of the students is dead on for about half and about half of us were a lot more athletic than that and a lot less intellectually persnickety. I got there with lots of dirt already under my nails and left a cleaner man.

Thank you for your post. 25 years later I’m still plenty nostalgic for the place.

Thank you for this column which is highly enjoyable and entertaining. You make some very good points.

It is also nice to read about Deep Springs College, which I attended from 1984 to 1986. Later I earned a B.A. at SUNY Buffalo, and a Ph.D. at the University of Iowa.

Deep Springs College provides a difficult and demanding program that is not for everyone.

Please allow me to apologize if you were treated with disrespect while you were a guest of the college.

Students at Deep springs take ideas seriously. Arguing and discussion (for excellent reasons or sometimes perhaps no reason at all) sometimes becomes the norm.

Because it also doubles as a working ranch, arguing is not enough. Hard work, competence, tenacity, and good craft skills are also respected.

Deep Springs College changes rapidly as students and staff come and go. Had you visited a year earlier or a year later your experience might have been very different.

That is because Deep Springs is “intensely republican with a small r.” Many tasks are performed by rotating committees, or by individual students who change office every several months (as was the custom in Italian or Greek city-state republics).

The admissions committee that considered you as a potential student was thus not a committee of academic professionals, but in large part the students of the college.

Because the students take such a large role in administering the College, mistakes inevitably happen. It is unfortunate if your experience was unpleasant. Again, please allow me to apologize. From your column, it seems clear that on some level the students were (consciously or unconsciously) testing you.

Thank you again for your column. The College is doing well. We anticipate celebrating the 100th anniversary of its founding eight years from now in 2017. More information about the college is available at its web site, and it continues to seek applications from prospective students who seek the sort of education it offers.

Kind Regards,

Charles Abbott

P.S.: like you, I came in on evening bus from Las Vegas and was dropped at Lida Junction around midnight. We did not drive 110 miles an hour the entire time because of the problem of cattle clogging the highway. Was that your experience?

I distinctly recall riding in the cab of a light pickup truck on the way to Deep Springs from Lida. Sometimes we went very fast, and other times we slowed to a crawl as we waited for the cows to get out of our way (some were perhaps sleeping on the warm highway). It was dark, so cow obstacles had to be predicted by signage, “cattle guard” crossings on the highway, etc.

During my time at Deep Springs only one or perhaps two students patronized the brothel at Lida Junction and admitted to having done so–such trips would only be allowed outside of the academic term when classes were not in session. Friends tell me that the brothel is no longer there.

The students do sometimes look like they may have just stopped following the Grateful Dead, but as you learned from your interview the culture of the college is in some ways rather straightlaced and serious. The use of drugs or alcohol are grounds for expulsion–by the students, not the staff. Perhaps for that reason, Peterson’s Guide lists Deep Springs as a non-party school.