At various times since 1985 I have been actively involved in Reed College’s “Paideia” interim program: teaching, taking scores of classes, and otherwise pitching in to help. As part of that I was contacted by the signator in January of 2008 and had a moderately detailed email exchange on various aspects of the program. In a minor aside in response to a direct question I mentioned that Cate Carter had once been a signator and the current signator, Wes Hilton, tried to contact her with a few minor questions. Apparently it had not registered that a stranger had found her on the Internet in fifteen minutes. Her decision around this, I would learn much later, was to freak out and notify the police, on the theory that my every conversation or mention of her was part of a master plan to win back her love, or kill her, or something. Emails below.

Wes Hilton to Rory Bowman, Jan 8, 2008 @ 10:48
Subject: Re: it’s paideia time!

Hi Rory,

The listings we have are below. I’m sorry I couldn’t get this to you earlier. As Emily said, the combatives class on Monday needs to be moved, but the rest can stay where it is.

As a side note, I was in the archives yesterday looking at old Paideia materials and saw your name appear a lot. One person credited you with “teaching more total hours of classes this year than anyone will probably attend”. Wow! I hadn’t realized just how much you’ve been doing for Paideia for so long. Thanks for all you do–we really appreciate it.

~Wes

Sunday (1/20)    Combatives A        3:00 PM    5:00 PM    mat room
Monday (1/21)    Combatives B      3:00 PM    5:00 PM    mat room
Wednesday (1/23)    Combatives C        3:00 PM    5:00 PM    mat room
Friday (1/25)    Combatives D       3:00 PM    5:00 PM    mat room

Wednesday (1/23)    Start Your Own Computer Consulting Business     1:00 PM    2:30 PM    CC110

Sunday (1/20)    Writing to Plan      10:00 AM    12:00 PM    CC110
Monday (1/21)    Writing to Heal      10:00 AM    12:00 PM    CC110
Wednesday (1/23)    Writing Relationships       10:00 AM    12:00 PM    CC110
Friday (1/25)    Writing to Remember     10:00 AM    12:00 PM    CC110

Rory Bowman to Wes Hilton, Jan 8, 2008 @ 12:16

Thanks, Wes, for getting back with specifics.

Bill and I are going to cancel the combatives, as I just explained in another email to Emily (with cc to you and Bill) but I am excited to do the writing and business things. Hopefully Emily and some of the other fighters can do something as good or better. There is a lot of solid material available from the Wikipedia article at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Combatives including a full link to Matt Larsen’s FM 2-35-150 at http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/fm/3-25-150/

It might make sense for Paideia to spend a few bucks on a physical copy of this manual from Paladin Press or Powell’s, to place in the Sports Center cabinet, in the Paradox cafe or even the library. There used to be copies of Fairbairn’s “Get Tough” as part of the main collection (basically a civilian equivalent from the time).

Also, if there is an online schedule somewhere (accessible from outside the Reed network) or a PDF I would be happy to promote these in the various unofficial alumni networks I am part of. Even alumni who hate Reed and everything the institution is or has become have a soft spot for Paideia and frequently enjoy taking part.

Some years I do more and some years I do nothing, but I am very glad that Paideia survived the late 90’s attempts by Student Services to completely destroy it or make it an authorized neo-nanny event, focused around condescension and childcare.

- Rory

Wes Hilton to Rory Bowman,  Jan 8, 2008 @ 13:05

We are in the process of turning our haphazard Excel file into a shiny PDF for printing and distribution. We’ll send it electronically to all participants and the alumni office within a week. In the meantime I will come up with a “mini-schedule” of some selected events that you can pass around on those networks.

A late-90s attempt to destroy Paideia, you say? Was there any discussion about this in, say, 1998?  Discussion that would have been printed somewhere? Since it’s Paideia’s 40-year anniversary I’m trying to put together excerpts from every tenth year. ‘78 and ‘88 are fine, but after about 1990 the archives are all but empty.

Thanks for all the classes,

~Wes

Rory Bowman to Wes Hilton,  Jan 8, 2008 @ 15:59

Interesting. I was coordinator for the 1995 Paideia and Kate Carter was the signator in 1998. Her website is http://madebycate.com so you should be able to contact her there.

The attempt was never overt, but during the presidency of Jim Powell (with Jim Tederman as VP of Student Services) there was the creation of a competing event called Reed Arts Weekend. At the time all of Paideia’s budget came from the Student Senate and had never been more than $10,000, while RAW had the full staff support of the Student Services office and PAID student staff (to Paideia’s volunteers). Paideia used to also be much longer, and run from pretty much just after New Year’s until classes opened. I’m not sure when it was shortened to its present abbreviated form, but that was largely for the convenience of the Student Services staff as well.

If you have any interest, I think it would be a terrific thing to create an online history of Paideia and all the classes involved over the years, perhaps making that part of a reunion theme or somesuch. Paideia was very much on the ropes in the mid-90’s and I assumed that it would be completely killed before 2000.

If you have any interest in this, I would like to do something longer-term on the history and place of Paideia. 1998 was the 30th anniversary and Kate had made some noise about marking that in some way. I wonder if that is why the archives stopped storing anything. Certainly there was a lot around when I last checked in 1995.

Hmmm. I think I may have an idea for a new Paideia class. What do you think? – Rory

Wesley Hilton to Rory Bowman, On Jan 9, 2008 @ 09:55

How times change! We still have RAW, but they’ve moved it to the beginning of March. The budget is definitely smaller, though: now we have $5000 instead of $10,000. I’m also surprised to hear that you coordinated Paideia after you graduated: now it’s a purely student-run affair, mostly handled over finals week and winter break.

But at least there’s less antagonism from the administration, at least that I’m aware of. I think that’s shifted to Renn Fayre, which is a big messy affair of indulgences and trash on the lawn.

It’s very last-minute for another class, but I am wild about the idea of doing some kind of project about Paideia’s history. We can put a link to an online visual history and/or an article in the printed catalog.

I made up a condensed schedule for you to give to your friends. I will send it in a separate email.

Rory Bowman to Wes Hilton, January 9, 2008 @ 12:22

Notice that I said “coordinator” and not “signator.” A student was officially in charge, but the senate trusted me enough to let me take a more active role than any student was able to that year. At one point there had been some discussion about institutionalizing Paideia as a more cooperative affair while still retaining student control: bringing in a few alumni and staff folks, etcetera, but the students could never get their shit together enough to do to this. Youth is often wasted on the young, and very few students appreciate what a unique opportunity Paideia represents, or what a wide and deep reservoir of talent the Reed “community” provides. It absolutely needs to stay under the control of the student body (with a student leader and student financing) but it is very possible to create a “stable” of presenters and class themes that could stand in the wings to be drawn upon as needed. The closest we got was encouraging various staff departments to offer their trainings during this period and open them up, with Computer User Services being the largest participant and the Sports Center closely behind.

Another idea that nothing ever came of was for the signators to commit to two or three years: first as assistant, then as signator then as advisor. If you love Paideia and plan to be around for a while, there is a moderate base of past folks who have assisted with Paideia in the past and who would probably be willing to help, if asked, but the short schedule really complicates things, and every signator seems completely unaware that all of their problems have been solved before and wastes time re-inventing the wheel.

I fundamentally see the main constituencies of Reed as following a generational model, with staff as the parents, students as children and alumni as grandparents. The logical power alliance is between the children and the grandparents so that the parents don’t become tyrants, with Paideia a very powerful place for such countervailing force to manifest.

Barry Hansen was originally brought in as a fundraiser, to increase the net budget through ticket sales. It is possible for many Paideia activities to actually generate revenue which subsidizes other activities, but few students have the time to understand or manage that in addition to their studies.

- R

Wes Hilton to Rory Bowman on Jan 10, 2008 @ 18:05

I like what you say.

Especially the idea of keeping around a “stable” of classes/instructors. I was frustrated this year that my role was so reactionary: I just waited for people to submit applications and couldn’t manage to actively seek anyone out.

Also the thought of people staying around to be involved in Paideia more than once, and I don’t know how Emily feels but I’m considering doing this again next year. (Not if people felt I was monopolizing the position, though.) I’d definitely love to stick around as an alum to help out Paideia in the future.

Whatever happens, I am drawing up a few documents to influence Paideia in the future. One is a collection of my experiences and advice so that next year’s organizer gets a bit of a head start, and another is a list of suggestions to the student Senate and the administration in order to make the whole deal smoother. (Number one? Appoint the organizers earlier than November.)

~Wes

Rory Bowman to Wes Hilton,  Jan 11, 2008 @ 11:07

Let’s meet and talk sometime this week. Because Paideia is funded by the Senate and their budget cycle falls as it does, the scheduling is a consant issue. What I have suggested in the past is that a stable system be established for housing all of these materials in one place. At one point I had created a FileMaker database for all this, but I don’t think it was ever implemented, and in the era of FaceBook and blogs and such, this should be housed online in a place that is not subject to Reed’s internal network weirdness.

A logical place to begin would be to compile a list of past classes and instructors, and configure some sort of online presence for alumni and others to take part. Now that Reed Alumni Relations is running their “alumni college” schtick each June, it would be logical to use this as a place to recruit and perhaps create a tie-in of common interests. I have some ideas but want this to be a way for alumni to directly support the student body, not infantilize them: especially those alumni who are hostile to the administration or do not want their contribution to the “reed community” to be primarily financial.

I believe I still have much of the information from Paideia 1995, and can probably assemble more. If you can begin to assemble a list of past signators, that would help enormously. When would be a good time for us to meet in person about this? There is no reason, for example, that a bevy of Reed martial artists could not descend for a whole series of classes such as Emily expressed interest in, and most of those are NOT professionals who should be charging for their services. Same for writers, carpenters, brewers and more. Let’s talk!

- R

Wesley Hilton to Rory Bowman on Jan 11, 2008,@ 12:20

I work in the Admission Office daily (weekdays) until 1:00. If you’re not busy in the middle of the day that would be a good time to meet.

An electronic database is not a bad idea, but an additional paper file couldn’t hurt. The current staff of the Student Activities Office is very friendly towards Paideia and probably wouldn’t mind holding on to things in a file cabinet for us.

The central storage place gives me an idea for inviting alumni. Over the course of a year we can run advertisements (in the Reed magazine, etc) inviting alumni to submit their contact info and areas of interest. Responses can accumulate all year, then get examined more closely during the fall semester when the planning really gets going.

Sorry for backpedaling, but I think it’s too late to add more classes to the schedule at this point. We’re trying to send the catalog to the printer by early next week to be ready for people to read on Friday. If we can get more alumni involved in preexisting classes that would be great, but I don’t want to overextend this year.

~Wes

Rory Bowman to Wes Hilton, Jan 11, 2008 @ 16:46

Oh, I had no delusions about adding classes this year, but in getting something going for years to come. Paper files are always terrific, but also at the mercy of one bad decision by someone going through a file cabinet. It saddens me to hear that the archives have so little after 1990, because I know that those years included some of the most jam-packed Paideias ever. I’ll try to catch you sometime in the next week or so. – R

Rory Bowman to Wes Hilton on Jan 14, 2008 @ 15:11

Terrific! Thanks for letting me know.

I have emailed at least one other past Paideia signator I know (Marna Hauk) and she would be available to meet this Friday afternoon if you are game, to discuss longer-term (2009+) Paideia planning. Marna’s Paideia had about 300 classes, just slightly more than mine. She has also worked for many years as a project manager, so will have some valuable insights on that aspect.

- Rory

Wes Hilton to Cate Carter, Jan 13, 2008

Hello,

This isn’t about the bags, although they look very nice. I’m actually just looking for Kate Carter. I hope I’m not being a creepy stalker by contacting you this way, but the Reed alumni database doesn’t have anyone by that name, and the “contact us” page on madebycate.com was empty. (Rory Bowman directed me to the website.)

I’m one of the organizers for Paideia at Reed this year, and I’d like to do something for the 40th anniversary. I was hoping to find some materials in the library archives about the 1998 Paideia, but they’re all but empty. I know it’s a long shot, but do you have any old documents lying around that might have something to do with Paideia when you ran it? Would you be willing to answer a few questions by email?

Thanks for whatever help you can give, and sorry for the unexpectedness of contacting you this way. You can respond to me at [email address redacted]

- Wes

Cate Carter to Wes Hilton, Jan 14, 2008

Hi Wes,

I think you’ve unintentionally ventured into a mine field on this one. Rory probably did not have mentioned this, but I have had to obtain a permanent restraining order against him in an attempt to put an end to ten years of harassment. One of the elements of the restraining order is that he is legally enjoined from contacting me directly or inducing third parties to contact me. It is wholly inappropriate that Rory put you in this position.

While this has little to do with your purpose, it has everything to do with my response. I wish you all the best with your celebration of Paideia, but I cannot assist you in this matter – I have severed all ties with Reed College to protect my privacy. I hope you can understand my situation.

Best wishes,
Cate Carter

Wes Hilton to Cate Carter on Jan 14, 2008 @ 14:40 pm

You guessed right. I was very unaware of the true situation. I’m sorry for the part I played in stirring things up, and I won’t trouble you any further. I will not reveal this email address.

For the record, in case it matters later on: while Rory gave me your name and website and tole me to contact you, he never said anything about using any online forms to send a message. That was all me, thinking I was internet-clever for finding a way to reach an off-the-grid person. Now it’s more clear why you didn’t want to be found. My apologies.

Best,
Wes