Thanks, Wesleyan. When I mailed in my deposit check this past April, I felt a small sense of pride at making it one fewer applicant that you would lose to the likes of Williams and Amherst. I spent many nights this past summer imaging how great it would be to finally get up here and add my legacy to the decades’ worth of history in the Butts’ tunnels. And now, in keeping with your attempts to transform this once-proud university into a low-budget Amherst, you have taken that opportunity away from me.

Soon enough, you’ll come out with some blanket excuse. Students in the tunnels presented a safety issue, you’ll say. Given that every fire drill robs me of the ability to hear anything for the next three hours, I’m partially inclined to believe this, but thirteen years at Baltimore’s best private school taught me a thing or two about logical reasoning. First came the chalking ban. Interesting, Amherst and Williams don’t have chalking either. This year, you decided to limit Foss Cross to simply frosh, probably as the beginning of a gradual elimination. Funny, Amherst and Williams don’t have cross-dressing parties during orientation. Now, you’ve painted over years’ worth of students’ expression. What a coincidence: Amherst and Williams don’t have graffiti in underground tunnels, either!

You’re not Amherst, you’re not Williams, and you never will be. They’re both sub-2,000-undergraduate colleges with billion-dollar endowments. Nonetheless, you seem unwilling to stop fighting a losing battle, so I’ll give you a few pointers. Amherst spends its money on professors’ salaries and not exponentially increasing the number of unnecessary administrative positions. Williams has a reasonably paid president who also teaches Economics 101. They don’t have sixty-nine-person thesis carrel waiting lists and significant housing shortages. And a day at one of these institutions is like a proclamation from the Baltimore Orioles’ front office: uninspired and predictable.

I know that I, for one, would be willing to overlook a tuition that rivals Alex Rodriguez’s salary and a faceless administration in return for the privilege of getting both a first-rate education and an incomparable college experience. But if I wanted to become a dull boy like Jack, I would have applied to U. Chicago or Harvard. Wesleyan is in danger of becoming the college equivalent of “The Simpsons,” jumping the shark by constantly trying to fix something that ain’t broke.

Later tonight, a group of my friends and I will make a trip to Lawn Avenue to see for ourselves this unspeakable act. When I return, I fully expect my posters of Ray Lewis and Homer Simpson to be replaced by a giant monitor displaying Big Brother himself, good ole Doug Bennet. I pray that this makes it to the Argus in time, before the Thought Police take that away from us, too.