Word: duskin
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...Tough Scene. Teacher Duskin started out as a perfectly conventional creep. The son of a San Francisco textile manufacturer, he went from the Marine Corps and Stanford to teaching freshman English at San Francisco State College. "The class was at 8 in the morning, and I discovered that nobody in the department was around that early. I said. 'Why are you policing yourself with this dead-brain text?' I replaced it with the straight Duskin line." But, dumped for having no doctorate. Duskin crept back to Stanford to earn one. He never made it: "You should walk around...
...dream was a student-built campus on the Monterey Peninsula, to be called Walden West-"a countermovement to the increasing rigidity and lack of human contact of most undergraduate schools." After a year of planning, recalls Duskin, "I understood that we were mad. We were completely hung up on buildings and floating loans and playing on the guilty consciences of the rich for donations...
Last year Duskin launched Emerson, named for Ralph Waldo, by simply renting a gabled Victorian mansion in Pacific Grove, a dry town founded by Methodists that seems at times as whimsical in its way as Emerson. For example, the municipal code forbids "any person to molest or interfere with the peaceful occupancy of the monarch butterflies on their annual visit to the city of Pacific Grove." Pacific Grove gives Emersonians the butterfly treatment. "They're a little weird," says the chief of police, "but I kind of like seeing them around...
...eight-man faculty has not had a payday ("The faculty supports the college"). When one highly qualified French teacher complained about dirty classroom windows, she was told: "You know we don't have a window washer here, baby. Wash them yourself." She quit on the spot. Nor does Duskin worry about policing students. Eight of them have set up their pads in a cabin outside town-in what combination he cares not. Says Duskin: "You can't lock girls up at 10:30 p.m. and expect them to understand The Republic." The only athletic endeavor is judo...
...Duskin's only rule is that students and teachers must keep him "impressed." One result is ding-dong trade in the attic library, where lights often burn all night. Says one teacher of the Duskin system: "With a cat like that staring down, you know you can talk. It clears the throat...