The Olin librarian who wears glasses and speaks too loud leaned over and asked me a very serious question yesterday. “You must be a senior, I’ve seen you around a lot over the last few years,” he said. “Do you think Wesleyan’s changed since you got here?” For a moment I thought back to my freshman days, when I had an afro and was generally humbled by my senior-class friends, who at the time seemed jaded and sometimes complained Wesleyan wasn’t “what it used to be.” But the librarian’s quizical look showed he wasn’t talking about the normal dose of senior disenchantment. “I’ve been here since the 70s,” he added, “but in the last two years, hasn’t this place gotten so…mainstream?”
Now that even the Olin Library staff thinks Wesleyan “ain’t what it used,” I think it is time the senior class admits this school is coming dangerously close to being overrun by an army of freshman and sophomore students who are too busy buying their next pair of Ugg boots on their Blackberrys to care about the stuff that makes this institution so special. Since MoCon was shuttered, Roth was hired, and everyone realized the endowment sucks, this University’s heralded in an age of moderation that, quite frankly, lacks personality and grit.
Applications to Wesleyan are up 22% because freshman and sophomore life at Wesleyan has grown soft and cushy. We’ve traded hardworking Aramark for the more esoteric Bon Appetit — a dining service with the balls to have an “executive chef” serve puky little freshman “arugula salad with raspberry vinaigrette” and “chilled polenta cakes.” Now, Dave the grill man, who was always nice enough to grill your sandwich in sizzling burger fat, can no longer meet the freshman class because he’s been hidden behind the hamburger grill and replaced by two poorly-used and burnt panini presses.
Where is the sweet old black woman who used to swipe cards? Or James, the toothless man who dished out grammar advice with the day’s main course? (e.g. “Can I have some more mashed potatoes?”… “I don’t know, can you?”)
When we were freshman, people stood on the balcony at MoCon and made public announcements. Unknowing prefosh would lean on the balcony’s handrail and be booed by an entire cafeteria of freshman for not speaking up. Not one person has made a public announcement from the steps of the Usdan Center, and even if someone were to speak up in the carpeted, aiport terminalesque dining halls, they can’t even be drowned out by the harmonic tune of falling cups.
Underclassmen used to smoke weed in the dining hall and no one cared. Upperclassmen enjoyed their dinner with beer or a fine Chablis. Once I saw a hockey player piss in a glass and drink it in front of a group of recruits. Our trays didn’t have the corners cut off so everyone could sit comfortably at the table. We had to make do.
If you wanted kosher you had to go to the Kosher Kitchen in the basement of the Butts and eat in a faux-wood paneled room beneath buzzing fluorescent lights. If you wanted vegan you had to climb four stories to the Vegan Cafe at top of Davenport and take abuse from the angry vegan chef, who offered not four cold bowls of mush, but a plethora of delicious food and drink. WesWings didn’t have marble countertops or flat-screen TVs and the “honey ginger chicken sandwich” was still called the “oriental chicken sandwich.”
Where did all the strange occurrences (and people responsible for them) go? I once saw a kid drive what looked like a Toyota Camry across Andrus Field and do donuts in the WestCo courtyard in broad daylight. There used to be flash mobs and the Boogie Club, a red-headed fellow who wore a pirate hat and walked around barefoot, and streakers, lots of streakers. Feminists used to go topless on the hill before the weather called for shorts. Seniors had dance parties that caved in their living room floors. An entire library full of students stripped to their underwear to pull a prank on a campus tour.
This school had a soul. Above and beyond being a black and red logo to slap on comfortable sweatshirts for incoming freshman and high-school-overachievers, or to print all over expensive, glossy brochures to make this place seem elite, “Wesleyan” was a word used amongst Wesleyan students for describing what made this campus tick. If the senior class doesn’t pick up its game this semester, that soul is sure to be forgotten.