Thank God all of those Generation Xers finally graduated, with their stupid ideals and silly spiky hair. Now we can finally get around to redecorating the admissions office. Bring out the suits!
Maybe you haven’t noticed, but the pictures on the wall in the admissions office have changed. Back in the day, last semester, you could walk in and see giant photos of campus celebrities like Max Carter riding his bicycle, or that blue-haired girl looking at home.
Today, to show every potential buyer what they could become with a Guilford College diploma, we have pictures of alumni as basketball coaches, conservative representatives in Congress, and a woman shaking hands with Hillary Clinton (there’s even a personal note at the bottom).
If I wanted to end up in a suit, I’d have gone to any other college in this country and probably paid a lot less for my education. Instead, I bought the girl with the blue hair. I bought Guilford because of what those cheesy little pamphlets promised me: Recycling! Vegetarians! Facial Piercings!
I don’t mean to imply that freethinkers have to sport wacky hairdos, or that there aren’t some very nice people who wear suits everyday. It’s just that what I liked about Guilford when I came for my interview was that it, as an institution, seemed comfortable with itself.
Biting my fingernails, and practicing my best Hot-Damn-I’m-Your-Man smile, I sat waiting for my interview in the admissions office. I looked up and around at all of the faces on the wall. They said to me, in so many words, “You’re weird; we’re weird; why don’t you come and grow here for a while – we’ve got tofu in the caf.”
Looking at the photographs now, the message I get isn’t meant for me. It’s meant for my parents. Furthermore, it’s not saying anything that a thousand other walls in a thousand other admissions offices haven’t already said.
The college needs money. I can respect that. But much like the way I can’t respect John Travolta in Look Who’s Talking I, II, and III, I don’t respect Guilford dumping its idealistic, nonconformist image just because it’s not profitable anymore.