Self-Governance ≠ Utopia

There's something new going on at Grinnell College. Something different. Something almost radical. The students at Grinnell College are self governing. Rather than calling campus security every time they have a problem, the students try and work problems out themselves.  They own up when they break things. They sit and talk with drunken students, and try to help them. They plan their own college activities, such as concerts and beer gardens. Unless a very serious issue arises, the students are in charge of making their own decisions and keeping each other in check.

Houston Dougharty, the vice president for student affairs, had this to say about the college:  “This is a place where you can create a utopian experience." (Mike Kilen) It certainly sounds nice. Students learn to solve their own disputes and be responsible. However, the question immediately arises: Does being “nice” or “good” automatically make something utopian? Awesome, sure, but utopian?

Lots of things are “nice”. Fresh baked cookies, good books, and snow days are all very nice things. However, a society where every day is a snow day and everyone just reads and eats cookies is probably not a Utopia. (In fact, I wager that cookie eating, snow day having, book reading society would dissolve in a few weeks, when the cookie ingredients ran out and everyone had to start burning their books for warmth.)

Pictured: Not a particularly utopian thing to be doing.
 

Obviously, just being nice or pleasant doesn't make something utopian. Dr. MB has raised the question of whether Grinnell College is utopian because it is socially commendable. I say it isn't. 
 
Firstly, the definition of “socially commendable” can vary extremely from person to person. What is socially commendable to one person could easily be socially despicable to another. I am sure that there are some people who would view Grinnell College's polices as liberal indoctrination, a horror that teaches young adults that they don't need to follow anyone's rules except for their own. I can almost hear them now: “Why, it's practically a step away from anarchy. You certainly aren't attending that cesspit, Cecile.” (These hypothetical people have a hypothetical daughter called Cecile. She will soon be attending a hypothetical Ivy League school and joining a hypothetical sorority, but that's another story. Maybe in the next blog.)

Secondly, a utopia is literally a “no place”. It is a non-existent society. Grinnell College cannot be a utopia, because it is an actually real place with actually real people doing actually real things. Even if the college was the pinnacle of human achievement, an absolutely perfect and just place, it couldn't be a utopia. Its realness would doom it. A utopia is a no-place. Grinnel College is a real-place. 

Thirdly, even if you ignore the relativness of socially commendable acts, and the definite realness of Grinnel College, there is still the fact that Grinnel College does not fit the most basic of utopian criteria. It is not social dreaming. It is a social reality. The moment a utopian place becomes a reality, it no longer fits the criteria for a utopia. Sure, it's awsome that Grinnel College is actually doing something commendable instead of just dreaming about it, but that doesn't mean it's utopian. Once something becomes real, it's not utopian anymore. That doesn't mean it's not good, or that it shouldn't be done, but a utopia literally cannot exist on this Earth. Utopias are confined to stories and movies. They're a thing confined to dreams and fictions, not realities. Utopias can't be real places. Real places can't be Utopias.
 
 
I am finishing this blog even more convinced that a utopia cannot exist than I was before. You can't make a no-place. It's literally impossible.