Is This Kansas

    In her essay "Is This Kansas" Eula Biss examines the reality of college by telling her own experience as a professor at the University of Iowa. The author uses irony and diction to uncover the truth behind many aspects of college, especially the nature of the students and living in a college town. She opens her essay saying that the longer she stayed in Iowa City, the less she understood the rituals that took place. One quote I thought was particularly striking was on page 132, "I would often wonder, during my time in that town, why, of all the subcultures in the United States that are feared and hated, of all the subcultures that are singled out as morally reprehensible or un-American or criminal, student culture is so pardoned." 

    Eula Bliss used conversations with her students to expose the ugly truth about college students. In one of her class discussions some students agreed that it would be a good idea to send all of the gay people in America to one state where they could be together and send their children to schools that would be " separate but equal." This shocked me, to see such stupidity and ignorance in my peers. During her last year teaching at Iowa, Eula Bliss experienced a storm in Iowa City. A tornado touched down and destroyed a thousand houses, pulled down trees, traffic signals and power lines. "In the dark silence after the storm the streets filled with students carrying plastic cups of beer and digital cameras, wandering past the live wires and the gas leaks, and lighting cigarettes. Some students dragged a couch into the street and sat on it, while some others gathered around cases of beer in a parking lot." In the midst of a disaster, the students acted as if it was some kind of free entertainment. This essay shows that the younger generations are loosing respect for their environment as well as their education. Instead of focusing on school, they are drinking their way through college, as Eula Bliss points out.