The Big Work of the Students of Deep Springs
I was delighted to see Michal Leibowitz’s essay about Deep Springs in the New York Times. I appreciate its admiring portrait as well as its call for institutions to learn from the Deep Springs model. However, there’s a significant omission in Ms. Leibowitz’s treatment, an omission of something fundamental to Deep Springs’ longevity and its transformative effects on students: self-government. The word does not appear in Ms. Leibowitz’s essay and while it mentions some activities of self-government – admissions, curriculum, and hiring – it understates the students’ leadership roles in these activities. The Student Body does not just “help” with these key functions: The Student Body runs the College with student-chaired and student-majority committees. Before I was hired as a long-term faculty member, I was interviewed for an hour by the student-led Curriculum Committee and then, when on campus, for two hours by the entire Student Body; the student chair of the Curriculum Committee made me my job offer. As the single faculty member on the Applications Committee, I and one other staff member were outnumbered by students 5:1; each of us had a single vote on selecting the next class of students, meaning the students could always outvote non-students.
Self-government pervades the whole of Deep Springs, imbuing the daily activities of academic seminars, work on the ranch and farm, committee meetings, and community events. The spirit of Deep Springs combines these institutions, long-standing traditions, the valley itself, and the character of the Student Body, which provides the institution’s motive force. In what follows, I want to make four points about labor, self government, and the Deep Springs model.
To develop character, labor must be free.
A coerced laborer can develop skills, but the development of character requires the freedom to influence the conditions of one’s labor. In what was likely a response to his first-hand experience of violence between miners and mine owners in Colorado, Nunn introduced self-government in his early educational programs to assure that labor would support the development of character. “The marked feature,” Nunn noted in 1905, was “the freedom extended to the student members.” Self-government allowed for the exercise of the freedom denied the miners. But the granting of freedom did not mean that everything was permitted. The development of character required students to learn that freedom consisted in self-control within limits. The limits of freedom were determined by the nature of the enterprise: at Deep Springs, this meant working within the ecological limits of high desert ranching as well as the financial limits of a small and often shoe-string budget. Self-government allowed students to choose how they would carry out this work, not what work they might like to do instead.
Self-government made free labor possible.
Self-government for Nunn meant two things: individual government, understood as the development of habits “tending toward mental, moral and physical strength, [and] continuity of purpose and effort”; and second, the self-government of the Student Body itself, which included “authority to regulate the conduct of its members,” “control and regulation” of facilities, and a monthly appropriation to be used to maintain property and promote the general well-being of the Student Body.
Self-government made free labor possible by granting authority to students to shape the conditions of their collective life. From the beginning, students were accorded broad authority in their work. They worked independently, joined planning meetings, and proposed solutions. Although Nunn was no Populist, he saw the advantages of distributing authority. This was not entirely altruistic: Nunn’s experience with labor unrest surely shaped his preference for cooperation on the management’s terms instead of between management and unions. But when put in an educational context, self-government made the Student Body responsible for its education in a fundamental way.
The Deep Springs Student Body made self-government a reality.
When Nunn founded Deep Springs, self-government’s educational role became central. The 1923 Deed of Trust with which Nunn created Deep Springs as an independent entity charges the Trustees of Deep Springs with the duty of according to the Student Body “the full right, power and authority of democratic self-government in accordance with its traditions and the ideals and policies of Deep Springs.” Labor is not mentioned in the Deed of Trust. It is gathered, along with other unnamed but historic activities like Public Speaking, in these “traditions.” Self-government is the keystone.
Nunn introduced the form of self-government, but the Deep Springs Student Body gave it content. By June 1923, when the Deed of Trust was signed, there had already been six student bodies. From the first Student Body meeting in November 1917, these student bodies claimed “the full right, power and authority of democratic self-government” to shape the institution of Deep Springs. The Student Body adopted Robert’s Rules and a regular Saturday evening meeting time. The Body created the Labor Commissioner position, which worked with staff labor supervisors to assign and manage student labor. It formed a Ranch Improvement Committee, which delivered regular reports on the efficiency of the ranch. The Student Body also elected a Student Treasurer, who reported on all operating expenses and revenue at the Student Body’s weekly meeting. These positions and committees have shapeshifted across the years since, but the Deep Springs Student Body continues to exercise self-government according to the traditions established in its early years.
“The big work of Deep Springs will be done, as it always has been, by the students.”
Ms. Leibowitz is right to describe Deep Springs students “not as consumers of a degree (an individual good), but as creators of an education (a collective good).” But this creation does not simply happen through labor; it happens through the self-government that pervades all dimensions of life at Deep Springs: seminars, labor parties, committee meetings, public speaking, Trustee weekends, reading groups, and conversational walks. This is “the big work of Deep Springs” which the students do: learning how to govern themselves and others.
During my four years as a professor at Deep Springs, I experienced again and again the intellectual and moral growth that self-government propels. “Thought” was one core capacity that the academic pillar sought to develop: not merely “critical thinking,” but creative thinking born of reading, reflection, discussion, experimentation, and revision. The holistic intellectual experience of Deep Springs meant that “thought” developed through seminar conversation, in the back-and-forth at the lunch table after class, in community-wide conversations initiated by speeches at Public Speaking, and on walks around the valley. Developing one’s thought was work, work that like moving irrigation lines was best done with others. The Deep Springs Student Body set the expectation that mere diligence was insufficient. Depth of thought, like a work ethic, cannot be compelled. When I challenged a student at Deep Springs, they chose to respond (or, as a famous clip from the documentary Ivory Tower shows, when they challenged me, I chose to respond). From 1917 onward, the Student Body has consistently and sedulously held up this tradition.
“The big work of Deep Springs” comes from a letter Nunn wrote to faculty member Paul Cadman in 1923. “The director,” Nunn continues, “while receiving and giving inspiration, should rejoice in that fact and have that particular meekness which the Lord declares shall be the foundation for inheriting the earth.” The lessons of the Deep Springs model for higher education are many, but for higher education administrators in particular, this may be a difficult lesson to hear: educate and empower student bodies to govern themselves; the big work of the institution is not yours, but theirs.
