By TINA IYER
Features Editor
 

"I had a big breakfast," he said.

Still, Rivers is not a small man. He is not a particularly large man, either; I did not expect him to be putting away pounds of pesto pasta (the way I was), but still, I was surprised by how meager his lunch was. He spent far longer draining his Mandarin Orange Polar Seltzer.

The first part of our conversation had taken place inside Austin's as we waited for our take-out orders (although Rivers aptly noted once we had ordered our food "to take-out" that all of Austin's meals are served on paper plates anyway).

We had discussed the poor maintenance of the Jordan School Apartments, where I had lived my sophomore year and where Rivers had just moved out of. Rivers, more assertive than myself, had left the landlords with a list of complaints.

Rivers also talked about his recent move to Portland, and what a relief it was to now be living in a more urban area. But what really excited him was out talk about South Africa.

Spending two months in South Africa this past summer, Rivers found himself truly at home in and intensely fascinated by this nation. He plans to return next summer for further research. Although he could envision himself permanently moving to South Africa, he admitted that too much of his life and family is tied up in the United States to make the move genuinely feasible.

Nonetheless, Rivers has no problem with the idea of constant movement, and he views this lack of need of job and geographic security as "emblematic of the wider world. People don't need to be committed to just one institution."

After his finishing his sandwich, Rivers mentioned that at one point in his life he had been a vegetarian. "I gave up meat for a weird reason," Rivers said in his soft-spoken manner.

During his undergraduate days at Rollins College in Florida (which boasts Mr. Rogers as an alumnus) Rivers had been a relatively relaxed student, who apparently got by without overextending himself.

It was only at graduate school at the University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, that Rivers realized he needed to discipline himself. Giving up meat was a form of discipline, and so Rivers tried the way of the herbivore. Eventually, he switched back to being an omnivore.

At 28, Rivers is one of the youngest professors on the Bates faculty. Although perhaps he could regard his youth as a reason to be intimidated, Rivers views his position as new blood as a healthy one. "The faculty here tends to reproduce itself," Rivers said, "they aren't as wild and crazy as they could be."

As a new professor, Rivers can offer the perspectives both of a younger adult and of someone perhaps more in tune with the most current trends in academia.

Rivers has only taught at Bates for one full year, but he has already earned himself the reputation of a devil's advocate and instigator of heated class discussions. When questioned about his method of leading discussion, Rivers admitted that he'd recently had a sort of "revelation" about his classroom personality.

"I'm generally pretty shy. I think in class there is something else that I use to mask shyness and uneasiness," he said. "I can't plan out a class, and God knows I can't plan out the responses."

For Rivers, the classroom situation has to be wide open to any direction that discussion may go; Rivers himself follows no hard-and-fast agenda. "I don't think that there's anything needs to be done [during class]," he said.

Talk in Rivers's classes can become fraught with tension, and from time to time students find themselves feeling personally attacked by some of the opinions expressed. As many of these comments are directed at the marginalized or people of color, I asked Rivers if he ever took these sentiments personally. But Rivers said he does not offend easily.

"I'd rather have people saying it to your face. If they think things but don't say them, that's more frightening," he said.

A Southerner by birth, Rivers noted that the political climate at Bates seems "very typically New England" because of its silence when it comes to the discussion of issues concerning socio-political issues. Nonetheless, Rivers claimed that it is easy to sense the underlying currents of feeling.

Rivers described it in this manner, "It's like being in [serial killer Jeffrey] Dahmer's house and seeing a bag in the corner of the room, and smelling this smell, but you can't see anything."

At a school that is as politically-correct as Rivers believes Bates is, he sees a pattern. Tension builds, the social climate becomes more uncomfortable, and then some incident causes these tensions to explode. Unfortunately, once the explosion has passed, these tensions go underground again.

"The P.C. mentality, I wouldn't say dominates, but is definitely there," Rivers said. "But college isn't supposed to be nice and calm."

For the college experience to reflect the real world, "It's important to engage different ideas."

Colleges need to be flexible, he said, with "a vibrant faculty to keep up with new students."

In the so-called "real world", people of color are not actually a minority, and "People aren't getting the best education that a college has to offer if the place isn't diverse," said Rivers.

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