JUNE 6, 1981
Lunchlines
College Visit Makes West Seem Like Paradise
Last month I went to visit the college I will be attending in the fall. I'm not sure I can handle that place.
Let me say that good 'ol XU is one of the top schools in the nation. I expected that the "Day at XU" (as they called it) would be organized. I knew I was doomed when, upon arriving on campus, I found signs pointing in opposite directions saying, "Park here for 'Day at XU." Mom put the car in the first place that looked like a parking space, and we began the long hike straight up to the student center.
Parents were invited upstairs to sit in a nice, comfortable auditorium while the prospective freshmen were herded downstairs. After checking in, we were allotted one folder, one schedule of events, five discount coupons for the school store, one doughnut, and our choice of coffee, milk, or prune juice. We then had to stand in the tour groups. No tables were about, so we were forced to balance everything on our folders.
After finishing my regulation doughnut and milk, I noted what tour group I was in. I had been put in the medical school tour when I had specifically requested a tour of the School of Journalism. I remarked to the tour leader that I shouldn't be in that group. He knew right away I was a journalism student-all the journalism students were assigned to the medical school tour because nobody was supposed to see the school they were applying for until the next year-it was a law laid down in 1862 by a large contributor who said in his will that that's the way it would be if the university wanted $3,000,000 in contributions each year.
I'll skip over the medical school tour-it was a little gross (especially the forensics part). After the tour we gathered in a large room in the student center. We were crowded together to hear a speech by a prominent history teacher. The professor was supposed to talk about choosing the right college, but I think he must have confused us with the 200 students in his freshman seminar because he started talking about the economic conditions of Bulgaria, Romania, and Peruvia in the fifteenth century. The student supervising the lecture did not realize what the
Sure enough, outside the room sat rows upon rows of white boxes, each containing cold, raw roast beef, one apple, one bag of potato chips, one cookie with "XU" inscribed in purple frosting, one napkin, and one can of soda. We sat on the floor in the corridors of the second floor of the student center and used our allotted 47 minutes to eat.
After lunch came the housing tour. We were randomly divided into groups of 23 and led out of the student center by volunteers. One of the girls in the group I was in asked where we were going and we were duly informed that we would be privileged enough to see all the housing on the north campus, by the engineering school. That was all well and good, but none of us were going into engineering. Our guide, naturally stunned, kept us waiting in front of a rock for twenty minutes while he ran around trying to find someone to switch maps with.
Finally, the guide returned with a map of south campus. He showed us around a number of dorms, frat houses, and sororities. We paused in front of a large, four-story building that appeared to be more of a school building than a dorm. This huge edifice is known as "the zoo"-the only all-girls dorm in the entire school. When a football player asked why that was so, the haughty reply was that the person who provided the money to build the dorm said that the dorm always has to be a girls' dorm or else the annual sum paid for its upkeep would be removed.
We returned to the auditorium of the student center to see a student talent show. We arrived in time to hear the emcee say that the person who had provided the money to keep the auditorium open that day had stipulated that the talent show had to be based on the Preppy Handbook. That was too much for me to handle, so I found my mother and the two of us slipped out through the John Q. Jones Memorial Car Park For Small Foreign Cars.
pause in agony.
College life is going to be different from Maine West. Au revoir, mes amis.