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Karl Shapiro attended the University of Virginia. He wrote a poem titled “University” in which he, in a reflective tone, attempts to educate the reader about the proceedings of a society governed by an established inequality of minorities. In the poem “University” he shows how the perceived inequality that society creates between members of different races, religions, economic positions, and educational backgrounds influences social life, creating conformity and causing unnecessary strife to the minorities involved.  

Shapiro demonstrates that racism is a major part of the social environment of his university, turning minorities into outcasts and victims. Shapiro summarizes the racism at the university with this blatant phrase: “To hurt the Negro and avoid the Jew / Is the curriculum” (1-2). He shows that racism is so ingrained in their society that it is even part of the curriculum, part of the university’s instruction. Shapiro speaks of how “Equals shake hands, unequals blankly pass” (11). He is explaining how social relations exist only between those on equal levels of the social hierarchy. He also speaks of how the racist students are not the only problem: “The Deans, dry spinsters over family plate, / Ring out the English name like coin, / Humor the snob and lure the lout” (20-22). Shapiro shows how the deans idealize their university to the community and general public, speaking the name of their university with pride. He also explains how the deans aim to appease the student body: they humor the snobs by allowing them to attend a distinguished university and lure the louts by providing members within the community, such as African-Americans and Jews, upon whom to exert their aggression in unity. This forms a group to which to conform by performing racist acts, and thereby creates an unfortunately functioning method of self-promotion within their community.

Shapiro uses metaphors and figurative language to suggest that the racism in the community is closely intertwined with the game of conformity played among the student body. “As the young, detecting an advantage, / Practice a face” (15-16) reveals how the young students create figurative masks – “a face” – for themselves and others to wear, so they may all conform to their social clique. Shapiro explains how, “Within the precincts of this world / Poise is a club” (23-24). “Poise is a club” is a metaphor in which Shapiro is comparing the students’ poise to a club-like weapon.  A club is a very barbaric and simple weapon that was used by cavemen who had not yet evolved to discovering more sophisticated technologies; Shapiro is therefore suggesting that the students’ poise is used in a brutish way. Shapiro explains how within the community poise is a weapon that people may and do use both offensively and defensively. However, the active participants are not the only problem: “The scholar / Sanctions their obsolete disease” (29-30). Shapiro speaks of how the scholars, who do not mask themselves socially to the same extent as the rest, allow the “obsolete disease” – a metaphor for the game of conformity – to happen all around them. However, the conformists cannot hold up masks behind which to hide forever, and Shapiro tells of what happens after: “some luckless race / Dull with inbreeding and conformity / Wears out its heart, and comes barefoot and bad / For charity or jail” (26-29). Shapiro is referring to the fact that in their society, everyone conforms to meet the standards of their social rank and people only procreate with those members to whom society considers them equal. He explains that they eventually get tired of having to wear their masks all the time and burn out, ending up with nothing, and ultimately being suitable only for others’ charity or for jail.

An economic and educational hierarchy also causes those at the top of the food chain to look down on those at the bottom, destroying many past connections. The acquisition of wealth and knowledge often transforms a person: “The gentleman revolts with shame / At his ancestor” (31-32). Those who acquire a high-class education resent the roots from whence they came, which they begin to view as beneath them and vulgar: “the true nobleman, once a democrat, / Sleeps on his private mountain. He was one / Whose thought was shapely and whose dream was broad; / This school he held his art and epitaph. / But now it takes from him his name” (33-37). Shapiro speaks of how the educated man, now wealthy enough to own his own “mountain,” was once poor. When the man was poor, he spoke of the school he graduated from with pride, but now, after he has become such a successful man, the school speaks of his graduation from it as its own source of pride.  This reversal of roles reveals the importance of one’s position in the social hierarchy.

Throughout the poem “University,” Shapiro shows how all the unnecessary hierarchies that people build – out of what they perceive as inequalities among themselves – create conformity and cause much misery to all the parties involved, and to some more than others. The different social groups only socialize with each other and conform to suit the standards they themselves create. Their conformity goes unimpeded by those who witness it, and it changes them; they begin to cause others, and eventually themselves, misery. Although levels of racism vary in different parts of the world, humans in general are a species that conform in order to appeal to their communities, and we all do this more often than we would like to think.