Remember the aphorism you were told as a child when you complained that, among all your friends, only you were not doing karate/getting dance lessons/building a machine pumped 150-psi pneumatic potato cannon with a muzzle velocity of 200 mph and 400-meter range? You turned your pleading eyes upon your mother or father who would wisely respond, "If everyone else jumped off a bridge, would you?"
That sage advice is evidently lost upon most of us collegians who, though we pride ourselves on unconventional thinking, have nonetheless elevated conformity to the position of a saintly relic.
A search for "peer institution" on the Web site of the Johns Hopkins Gazette, the University's official newspaper, returns 1,767 results. The News-Letter's website returns only 29 results, but those must be considered in light of the fact that the News-Letter Web site is only slightly more useful than a blindfolded bombardier.
Some of those Gazette queries may be duds, but what ought to be clear is that those associated with the University, at virtually every level, are obsessed with living up to the standards set by this group of peers.
Whenever tuition increases, the University defends hikes with an appeal to peer ranking. After a 4.9-percent rise was enacted for the 2005-2006 school year, the Gazette reported, "The university in fiscal year 2005 dropped to 12th in tuition rate among a group of 18 peer institutions." Somehow, the fact that Hopkins costs as much as other overpriced colleges is supposed to put our minds at ease and prevent griping while reaching ever deeper into the pocketbook. Rank within this peer group is further deployed in discussions of fund-raising, admission rates and pretty much any other statistic the bean counters deign to track.
Students also play this game, and usually as a means of criticizing the University for perceived inadequacies. This newspaper has featured many an article calling for better performance within the peer group on issues ranging from compensation for teaching assistants, professor pay, student and faculty diversity, availability of housing, and labor practices. If we could compare the quantity of brick at Homewood to that of peer institutions, we would do that too.
Why don't we recognize just how infantile this kind of thinking is? This is a place of higher learning. Surely we can do better than the equivalent of a snubbed 6-year-old's bellyaching.
It is the immaturity of the peer institution claim that makes it so unsatisfying and, therefore, futile. Thanks to the aforementioned parental wisdom, we are, in general, unconvinced by "everyone else is doing it." That is no basis for real commitment -- be it to diversity, the environment, financial aid or anything else worth fighting for within the University.
If we want to convince each other of the need for change, we need to do so through reasoned argument that weighs the advantages and disadvantages of a course of action as it applies to Johns Hopkins University, not Brown or MIT or some other peer du jour. Let's consider our own problems and our own solutions. Five hundred other universities might sign a petition, but unless local proponents of similar measures can generate a persuasive argument of their own, skepticism should and will persist, and potentially worthy initiatives will go untested.
But, if appeals to the status of peer institutions are truly the purview of the unimaginative and ineffectual, why do they persist? The answer, I believe, lies in their capacity to pacify the inferiority complex that rages at Hopkins like a five-ton hemorrhoid.
We compare ourselves to the Cornells and Yales of the world because so many of us wish others would. Placing ourselves in their peer group and then mentioning that fact at every possible occasion is a way of saying, "Hey, we're in the club too!" Apart from its overgrown medical arm, a bicep of Olympian proportions, the University receives little attention compared to the Ivies and other strong schools like Stanford, and for many students, was at best a second choice after those other august colleges.
But, the right advice for those wondering where they stand in the epic pissing match of academic prestige is to get over it and start learning something. This is Hopkins, not some monstrous agglomeration of fellow universities. The best we can do for ourselves is not to continually conform to our peers, but instead distinguish ourselves from them. Maybe then we'll stand proudly, on our own.
--Simon Waxman is a senior International Studies major from Newton, Mass. He is opinions editor for the News-Letter.
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