What makes the event so intriguing is the shared experience of the students and the faculty. It doesn’t work unless everyone is in on the joke. The fact that Prof. Burke can joke about the lingo of his own discipline is surely not lost on his students and probably goes a long way towards making them more receptive to his teaching the concepts behind the lingo.

The sort of joco-serious faux-jousting of the Bathtub Debates isn’t that common in higher education anymore, and in my experience it never happens at bigger universities. To my eyes it suggests a healthy collegiality amongst the disciplines at Swarthmore, as well as between students and faculty (nice to see students in on the joke!).

To follow out the metaphor, though you’re debating who should get to go in the bathtub, the nature of the event the three of you are participating in actually suggests you’ve all agreed to get into the bathtub together, sink or swim.

Kudos to the students, too. It’s quite remarkable that something like 10% of the student body showed up for this packed house event and joined in the spirit of a humorous approach to a challenging philosophical question. Some of the questions were great.