The Rape of Alma Mater
Wells Earl Draughon
(Reviewer - Rebecca Brown)
2004 iUniverse
ISBN: 0595332498

Students caught in the “Culture War” expanding from college campuses into the media.

From college presidents to governors, to TV reporters, to faculty, to government agents, to drug dealers, to students of every political stripe, The Rape of Alma Mater follows a trail of circumstances, opportunities seized, weaknesses exploited, advantages enlarged, groups co-opted, expediencies implemented, to the ultimate unforeseen result where facts, rationality & evidence are sacrificed for a “greater good”, where questioning is insensitive & disagreement is backlash, in a takeover that both liberals & conservatives see as ominous.

The Rape of Alma Mater is a sardonic sketch of the history & possible undercurrents of the agitation among students during the Viet Nam War & its aftermath. It follows a group of men & women attending their State university, as they foment unrest, connect with other colleges, create angst out of thin air, worry about the draft, utter platitudes about social issues & practice rank chauvinism within their group.

Then the group graduates into real life, & the network of college friendships begin to congeal into something a bit more sinister. Meanwhile the women in the group have gone on to careers in the private sector, discovered Women's Liberation & post-campus love.

The Rape of Alma Mater is a montage of faculty meetings & political conferences, private conversations & public encounters, moments of peer pressure, manipulation, cowardice & conspiracy.

If you have any doubt about the direction of The Rape of Alma Mater, the final chapter raises the grim specter of misplaced ethics, misappropriated morals & misused polemics. A chilling indictment of the artifice in academia.

Well done! Scary & ever-so plausible.

More from Wells Earl Draughon:
Traci
Lies
Last Things First Things
Advanced Writing: Fiction and Film
Heather
A Book Worth Reading
(03/13/05)

Rebecca