Poking Fun at Yourself Takes Real Genius

Institutions that can laugh at themselves have a chance to survive.

Thanks partly to the theatrical wit of J. Kent Clark, now emeritus professor of English literature, Caltech for years has made fun of itself.

We went to the Athenaeum the other night so see a Clark retrospective performed by a group of students and faculty for the Caltech Associates.

The show spanned 30 years of high jinks from Clark’s facile mind, in which period “the most important event, by several orders of magnitude,” was the admission of women as undergraduate students. Its shock waves are still felt.

It began with a discussion by three professors and a student of an appropriate celebration of the Caltech YMCA in 1966. Clark said he had thought of updating the script.

“It was written before we had undergraduate women, before bunny clubs came and went, before pocket calculators, before the old Burbank burlesque theater was torn down, before personal computers, before moon walks--actually, before original sin.” It was “bronzed like baby shoes” and could not be changed.

Seeking something emotionally maturing, the committee finally agrees on a night at the Burbank follies. “Why man,” says one of the professors, “I got more emotional development in one night at the Burbank than I got in four years at MIT.”

They sing a song whose chorus is “Down at the Burbank, they have it down at the Burbank/You’ll find it down at the Burbank, where form is fancy and free/All is sincere there, artistic meaning is clear there/And brother if you are near there, that’s where you’re sure to find me.”

From a later show, Sue Gibson, with male support, sings the Caltech student’s lament, “What’s a Nice Girl Like You?”

Men: “We’re very glad to see you, delighted that you’re here/You give the place a touch of charm and class/We honor your intentions, admire your dimensions/We love both your momentum and your mass/So don’t misunderstand us, and never never go/But there is one small thing that we would like to know/What’s a nice girl like you doing in a place like this?”

She answers: “What’s a nice girl like me doing in a place like this?/A nice girl like me happens to be fond of physics/A nice girl like me wants to be an engineer/Fond of mathematics, fond of hydrostatics/Any new dimension, any new invention/Wild about a proton, gamma ray or photon/No ton I want to miss/Being in a place like this. . . .”

From a 1987 show, “Troll’s Progress,” we hear two students, one male, one female, explaining to their advisers why they can’t ask each other for a date. Several lines poignantly illustrate Clark’s theme that the Caltech undergraduate has an image as “intellectually brilliant, emotionally immature, culturally deprived and socially gauche.”

The two students are separated by a wall in Fleming House, where both are resident. The advisers are trying to persuade them to go to the interhouse dance together. Wilbur is deep in self-abnegation. He has just creamed a geophysics exam. He says: “How could I possibly date a girl who would go out with me?”

Cheryl thinks herself ugly. “I’m such a dog he won’t even notice I’m a woman. Men who see me without my horn rims keep telling me to put them back on. . . .”

Wilbur protests, “Where would I find a girl?” His adviser answers that Caltech has hundreds. “They might as well be on Mars. The ones that aren’t going steady are barricaded behind doors, with waiting lines 10 deep, and the ones that aren’t barricaded would rather read (Prof. Richard) Feynman.”

Cheryl’s adviser tells her that Wilbur is really amazing. ‘He can do cube roots in his head; he can recall any historical date he ever heard; he can recite from memory every formula in the Engineer’s Handbook. . . .”

Cheryl says: “But I already have a computer. Please, couldn’t I (date) someone with fewer circuit boards and more muscles?”

Dean: “Maybe so, but not at Caltech.”

The dean explains that Wilbur’s ego has been shattered and that he needs help. Cheryl says: “It’s the Caltech tragedy. There’s nothing so devastating as growing up as an intellectual prodigy and then finding out you’re only a genius.”

Meanwhile, the founding fathers--Robert Millikan, Arthur Amos Noyes and George Ellery Hale, in their academic robes--looked down on these calumnies from an oil painting on the wall. They never cracked a smile.