What should we do about the town v. gown gap?

That's what it's traditionally termed: Town v. Gown.  It's lampooned in "Animal House."  As the Delta's destroy the parade, and much of Main Street with it, we see the mayor strangling Dean Wormer.  It's what many "townies" have always wanted to do to us administrators and professors, as well as our students.

I attended college in the second half of the Sixties, something like five years after the time in which the iconic movie was made.  And I recall an evening when a group of "townies" showed up at our fraternity --- the animal house of Franklin & Marshall College.  The local lads picked the wrong frat house to threaten.  Most of my brothers were dedicated jocks and weight lifters.  When the leader of the town group confronted our half-dozen biggest brothers and said, "You college guys have it up here but we have it down here," pointing first to his head and then to his body... somebody doused him from a window with a bucket of water.  It dampened his ardor for a fist fight.

Personally, I felt sorry for him and his friends.

But back in those days, the townies could look for well-paid manufacturing jobs at plants like Hamilton Watch, which had enormous war contracts on top of its brisk watch and clock business.  I myself was a night watchman in a local tool-and-dye plant for a semester or two.  Hourly manufacturing jobs were tickets to high wages, good benefits, union security, and a pension.

The gap between town and gown yawned wider and wider as this election day approached.  Or maybe it just became more visible than ever before.  White voters without college degrees overwhelmingly support Trump.  They have abandoned the Democratic party.  White college grads are more split, but the majority favor Clinton.

Those without college degrees no longer can count on making a good living that leads eventually to a comfortable retirement.  And I have to agree with Trump that both parties... and both the political establishment and Wall Street... have abandoned them.  Their grievances are real.

Regardless of who wins today, we in higher education should be asking:

Do we owe anything to the "townies" that the information age has left behind in their rust-belt and rural pockets?

And if you agree with me that we do, what should we be thinking about doing, when we wake up on November 9th?