Mark Twain once said: “Don’t let the schools interfere with your education!”  The following stories will prove his point: Even on campus there are more to learn outside the classroom than in it!

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1. A Co-educational Monastery

BereaCollege is a small liberal arts college located in a small town in Kentucky named Berea.  Its enrollment stands at around a couple of thousands.  The town of Berea is equally small (5,000 or so including the students!)  There was one cinema showing only old movies, and there was not even one pizza restaurant in town (at least when I was a student there.)  If you want pizza or watch a new flick or shop for a decent pair of shoes, you need to take a bus or drive to Richmond, a town some forty-five minutes away.  Yes, Berea is an isolated “monastery” with one important saving grace: it’s co-educational and everyone lives on campus!

A Christian, non-denominational school that has an excellent reputation, it offers 4-year full tuition scholarship to all of its students.  In fact, if you can afford to pay tuition, BereaCollege will not accept you because its mission is to offer an opportunity for students who are economically challenged.  In return for the tuition scholarship, each student must work on campus for twenty hours a week, in the offices, the library, the laboratories, the cafeteria, the dormitories, the school-run hotel...so the school is literally run by students. 

BereaCollege attracts students from all over the US, especially from the poor, coal-mining region of the AppalachiansMountains, as well as a small number of foreign students who have somehow heard of this unique school.  Lin Chi Chung whom I knew from high school heard about Berea from a friend.  He enrolled at BereaCollege and he told me about the school. 

So one day in late August 1971, I landed in RichmondKentucky and took a cab to Berea (it was an expensive ride, but the bus ran only a few times a day).  With some help, I located the dormitory that I was assigned to.  Lin Chi Chung had not yet returned from his summer break so I was on my own. 

The dormitory (Pearson Hall) was nearly empty as most students would not check in for at least a week.  The dorm director assigned me to a room temporarily until he could work out the details.  I was happy to find that I had a roommate who was a second-year returning student.  His name was Michael and he came from Malaysia.  He was Chinese but spoke only English to me.  He studied economics or something like that.  After a few niceties, he got right down to it…

“Bob,” he stared right into my eyes, with a smirk on his face, “the girls here are HOT!”  

“Hot?”  Could it be the weather? I didn’t know what that meant exactly, but decided that I should hide my ignorance.

“They’re HOT!” he repeated for emphasis.  “But you need to be careful about them!”

“Yes?”  I tried to sound as if I knew what he was talking about.

“And I don’t just mean the proper protection…” he paused.  It’s a good thing I’ve read about the proper protection, things to do to prevent conception and nasty diseases.

 “That’s the easy part.  What you need to watch out are girls who came to Berea with only one thing in mind…”  What could that be, I wondered?

“To…find…a…husband!” he said slowly and made sure I heard every word clearly.

“Oh, I see!”  That was a new concept to me, and I must have sounded rather surprised at the time.  Looking back, Michael had indeed made some astute observations.

- To be continued -