Page 4 - Failed Experiment

A Failed Experiment

When I arrived at AC, I was caught off guard. I became an outsider. I
became persona non grata. The transformation took place so
precipitately and forcefully there was little time to process it
psychologically. But, on reflection, at the same time, I became
someone who had a new vantage point. When one stands outside the
pale, when one is on the other side of the boundary, when one ceases
to be a part of something but is yet present, the status of being an
observer is implemented. Further, another part of this metamorphosis
is that though I was physically present as an observer, the same
marginalization led to my being invisible within the AC community.
In the parlance used at AC, I was a 1-W, a de-personalizing label. So I
found myself, by some strange and unanticipated process, rendered an
outsider, observing but invisible.

So I am writing some of what I observed while working on the Big
Sandy campus for those two years in the early Seventies as an invisible
employee. And these observations, in retrospect, have led me to
understand that AC was a failed mission as defined by its own
standards. I will start at the beginning, with my first encounter with an
AC official, and then provide some anecdotal evidence in the middle.
At the end, I will make some observations. I will keep the anecdotal
middle spare because the theme established at the beginning carries,
like a true thread, throughout the entire experience. If more evidences
were added to this account, the middle would just become a gross and
inordinate accumulation of the same kind of dreary thing over and
over. And it would involve yet more people and places and events little
known and best forgotten.

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