| Mr. O'mara sat across from us at the seminar table. "None of you are going to know what this class is about until we're finished, and, even then, you may not, but I'm not going to tell you." None of us were comforted by this declaration of uncertainty that the short, chubby, no-necked professor had just given us. The class was called In Search of a New Rhetoric, and none of us were even sure what rhetoric was. The textbook definition was "persuasion," but we did not see the point in the synonym. O'Mara approached me differently than the others from the beginning. It was an upper divisional speech and communications course, and I had never taken any speech courses. "This class is for senior speech majors," he said on the first day, "How did you get in without my permission?" "I read the description, thought is sounded interesting, and signed up. No one asked for a note from the instructor." "What is your major?" "English." "And you're a senior?" "Yes." "Do you think that is preparation enough for this class?" "I hope so." "You can stay if you want, but you can drop." I was worried at that point. This conversation took place during class. All of the speech majors knew each other, and they looked dumbfounded. Someone had taken an O'Mara course with no preparation and as an elective? For the next month, thirteen confused students sat for an hour twice a week with Mr. O'Mara discussing politics, the books we read for class, and something O'Mara called "making connections." This was something he spoke of often, but none of us knew what he meant. A connection, said O'Mara, is what you make when one thought leads you to another subject, and you can relate the two. During a discussion on the presidential campaign, O'Mara would often pick up a book he had assigned and say, "any connections?" He would receive thirteen blank stares. Once in a while, the two frat boys in the class would chortle to each other and grunt something about making a connection at a keg party, but for the first month, we did not know why we were there. We talked politics, we talked life, but we never seemed to talk subject matter. We read some dialogues by Plato, and we read a science-fiction-styled book called Lucifer State which reminded me of Orwell's 1984. "Is our English major making a connection?" O'Mara asked when I shared that thought. I guess I was, but it did not seem relevant. The story lines were similar. The society persecutes its citizens for thinking differently from the established norm. There was complete control over individual will, and computer technology made this control possible. O'Mara suddenly became enthusiastic and tried to persuade me to elaborate. I must have said something right but not realized it. I was stumped by his reaction, and the class moved on. About halfway through the course, most of us were still questioning what the class was about. One early version of an answer was the history of Western politics, today's politics, and the future of politics. The problem with that conclusion was that is was not a political science course but a communications course. The lights went on when O'Mara showed us a video called Miracle on 72nd Street. It showed everyday life on the streets of New York with a narration that discussed free will, compromise, and human behavior. One of its primary arguments discusses the preoccupation with individual freedom and how that can destroy free will. That was a new one on the rest of us. "Are they saying we can't be individuals but little automatons to keep society going?" I asked, a bit disturbed by the movie. O'Mara had this habit of never answering questions. He just asked the question posed at the end of Miracle on 72nd Street, "Who's in charge, and who gave the order to march?" We all left the class more confused than we had been the first day. "There's more to it than politics," I said to one of the frat boys as he drove me to my apartment. "Well, I can't figure it out. I wish he would just tell us what the big mystery is." That night was a Thursday. That's when the college-town weekend starts. But I stayed in. My head was spinning with questions about the march. Why do we all go out on the same night? Why do I dress like everyone else? Why are commercials so influential? Why does everything work the way it does? Would the American people have killed Socrates? I stayed in that night, sat on the lime-green couch, and thought about the march until I fell asleep. It hit me when I awoke early the next morning. Within the first few moments of consciousness, I sat up and blurted out, "It's the rhetorician! He's in charge!" "What does that mean?" I asked myself as I threw on my coat and headed to the bus stop. Everything we do is done because we have been persuaded to do it. The fashion designers have convinced me that 501 blues look better on me than bell bottoms, the advertisers convinced me that Coors light is "the right beer now," and O'Mara persuaded all of us to think about rhetoric. I found O'Mara in his office. I walked in and sat down, my head aching from sleeping on the uncomfortable couch combined with my brain trying to make connections. I was aware of a minor problem with the answer I was about to give O'Mara. I knew who was in charge, but who gave the order to march? I decided to wing it. O'Mara stared at me as I collapsed in the chair across from his desk. "Well?" he asked. "It's the rhetorician," I said, "He's in charge. I don't know who started the whole thing, I don't know who gives the order to march every morning as we slam our alarms and put on starchy white shirts with ropes around our necks and call them work clothes, but the rhetorician is in charge." I waited for his answer. Was I right? Was I off? Was I just tired and stinking up his office with yesterday's clothes? He never said. He just looked at me. Then, in usual O'Mara form, he said, "Do you think you're right?" "Yes." "Do you think you can prove it?" "Yes." "Then I want you to present this to the class Tuesday." A typical undergrad's thought bored its way into my consciousness like a giant tick. I had just dumped a whole load of extra work on myself for the weekend. I agreed to it and left. I then put it off until Tuesday morning, about an hour before class. I was still in bed when I pulled my notebook form the nightstand drawer and started to write an outline of my arguments. My classmates looked as if they had never seen daylight. All were grimacing from having to think on a Tuesday morning, the official college-town morning after the weekend. I went on about the Savings and Loan scandal and about how the rhetoricians distracted the masses from the issue with the emotive issue of flag burning. I said something about the fashion changes since Miracle on 72nd Street which was filmed in the Orange, Paisley, and army-green Brady Bunch era. I had some other arguments, but they all made the same connection. We give up our free will to live in the safety of a society. The only control we have over ourselves is to minimize the affects of the persuasion within that society. It was a kind of plea to turn off the TV, wear a hat inside if you want, take a trip to Belize, read Thoreau's Civil Disobedience and truly understand what consequence is; I covered maybe too much, but the class seemed to understand. O'Mara just sat there with the world's best poker face without ever saying I was right or wrong. Our final exam included dinner at O'Mara's house and a discussion afterwards. We ate like vikings since we were used to either dining hall food or our own cooking. Real steak, potatoes, and vegetables fixed deprived appetites. The discussion took place in O'Mara's living room. The final exam question? "I think the television is in charge," said one. "I think it's Washington lobbyists," said another. I stuck with my "the rhetorician is in charge" with an addition: "and he gives the order to march." We spent an hour discussing our theories and reasons, and when it was over, one of the frat boys looked at O'Mara and asked, "Who do you think is in charge and gives the order to march?" "It's very complex, but to state it simply, the rhetorician. That's why I became a professor; no one is really in control." With that statement, we all suddently became aware that most of us would eventually end up in the forty-year, 9 to 5 routine with bosses, bills, and little social mobility. How much control could we have? Is keeping a majority of the population in debt the only way to control a society? Who has the luxury to be liberal when financial worry forces many to stay conservative? After our discussion, we filed out of O'Mara's front door shaking his hand and greedily accepting his well-wishing for our futures. Some of us headed downtown to the bars; others headed to their cars and home. All of us left with more questions than answers, and because of that, as Plato might have said, we all left a little wiser. |
| College-Town March by Jonathan Bright |
| Copyright © 1993 and 2002 Jonathan Bright |
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