On Boards of Governors (or, a blog on BoGs, if you will)

Continuing the flood of information on the internet concerning the Ave Maria schools (you can find all the dirty laundry here), I thought I would draw attention to a particularly insightful part of That Hideous Strength by C.S. Lewis. This section of the book concerns a board meeting at Bracton College. Bracton College is an institution under the control of a small group of men, called the Progressive Element. The college owns a certain tract of land called Bragdon Wood (which, incidentally, may be the burial site of Merlin). The reader is told that"[t]he most controversial business before the College Meeting was the question of selling Bragdon Wood." Yet even though this was the most important issue the school was facing, it was not given its proper respect:

The Progressive Element managed its business really very well. Most of the Fellows did not know when they came into the Soler that there was any question of selling the Wood. They saw, of course, from their agenda paper that item Fifteen was, "Sale of College land," but as that appeared at almost every College Meeting, they were not very interested. On the other hand, they did see that item One was, "Questions about Bragdon Wood." These were not concerned with the proposed sale. . . .

The meeting continues on for several pages. It is quite interesting to read as the Progressive Element manipulates the "outsiders" by deceit and double talk. The Progressive Element has already as much as committed to the sale of the Wood, but now they are engaged more in preemptive damage control with the others who care about the college.

Mark Studdock, a young Fellow at the College and one of the central characters of the story, also helps explain the actions of the few men in control of the college:

Three years ago, if Mark Studdock had come to a College Meeting at which such a question was to be decided, he would have expected to hear the claims of sentiment against progress and beauty against utility openly debated. Today . . . he expected no such matter. He knew now that that was not the way things were done.

This meeting takes place within the first 25 pages of the book, where the readers are learning of a new reality filled with many new people. Lewis, being a very deliberate author, uses these early scenes to shape the reader's impression of the characters. Addressing a general distinction in characters--good guys versus bad guys--the reader is quickly made aware through the dishonest leadership of the Progressive Element that they are not aligned with the good guys.

I hope that once the Ave Maria story is fully told it will sound less like Bracton College than it currently seems. Based on the actions of Ave's own Progressive Element, I am not too optimistic. Of course, in the Ave Maria story, the Progressive Element has to face characters with much greater virtue than Mark Studdock, which will at least make its work much more difficult.