Did students petition to have Bruce Springsteen expelled from their college?
It’s hard to write and admit this as a nerd who cherished waking up every morning to walk into a classroom and learn about various topics, but not everyone enjoys going to school. However, when Pink Floyd sang, “We don’t need no education,” they couldn’t have been more wrong, and when Alice Cooper rejoiced about there being “no more pencils, no more books,” he clearly didn’t know what he was going to be missing.
Whether it’s being forced to understand complex mathematical equations (i.e. fun), having to write lengthy essays (also fun), or getting the shit kicked out of you at break time (character building), there are plenty of things that school and education can offer that will shape you as a human being. Without the structure of academia, I know I’d have been a complete shambles of a person and would probably have struggled to apply myself correctly in my adult life.
However, for a young Bruce Springsteen, school was a largely miserable experience. From allegedly being stuffed in a bin by one of the sisters at St Rose of Lima Catholic School to becoming a loner during high school, there was little that Springsteen enjoyed about his scholastic life, and from a young age, all he ever wanted to do was play guitar.
His dislike for the strict regiments that were imposed on him caused him to become more disorderly, and his self-imposed extradition from his peers made him feel like an alien within the institutions he was enrolled at. In 1967, when he graduated from high school, he opted not to attend his ceremony due to how distant he felt from his classmates, and his subsequent brief stint at Ocean County College was equally as fraught with trouble.
By this time, Springsteen was already pursuing his dreams of becoming a famous musician, having formed his band, The Castiles, during high school. While the group were popular among his school peers, they disbanded in 1968, and Springsteen would form various other bands like Earth and Steel Mill, who performed many times at OCC during his time there. However, legend has it that Springsteen was still subject to hostility from those around him and was supposedly the victim of a petition to have him expelled from the college.
Was this due to Springsteen continuing his rebellious ways or simply because he focused too much on his musical aspirations? Very few sources state whether the petition existed or what the reasons for it were, but his lack of popularity at the college is widely reported, and Springsteen chose to drop out as a result.
He shared details of his experience in an interview with Rolling Stone in 1984, stating: “I had tried to go to college, and I didn’t really fit in. I went to a real narrow-minded school where people gave me a lot of trouble, and I was hounded off the campus – I just looked different and acted different, so I left school.”
His persistent pursuit of becoming a musician and opting not to go down the academic route would pay off within the next decade, as he would immediately find fortune with the release of his two 1973 albums, Greetings from Asbury Park, NJ and The Wild, the Innocent & the E Street Shuffle. He’s also continued to push his agenda of skipping class towards the youth of today, having written school absence notes for young fans of his attending concerts on more than one occasion.
Fair enough, Bruce, school might not have been the best option for you, but to quote Pink Floyd again, “leave them kids alone“.
