Sunday's Quote: A foreigner at Ole Miss

It's been a year, almost to the day, since I've been back to Ole Miss. Last time, I watched helplessly as Cam Newton and the future (bastardized) national champion Auburn Tigers had their way with the Rebels. So considering that my visits to Oxford are fewer and further in between than preferred, it is nice to stumble upon a story on occasion that fully depicts the attributes of a special place that doesn't always get its just due. And perhaps most importantly, this review in particular is by an outsider who hails from the other side of the Atlantic:

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"I had been dimly aware that the American South is famous for its hospitality, but was unprepared for a level of friendliness that would have been faintly nauseating if it weren't so seductive. Wherever I went, people smiled at me with their gleaming, perfect teeth. . . . The vibe on campus was such that one could easily strike up a conversation with a stranger. At home this atmosphere had just about lasted through freshers' week; here, it lasted throughout the year. . . .

"A laid-back attitude and general reluctance to sweat the small stuff became uppermost in my daily mentality, and I can say with complete confidence that this was a boon in my academic, athletic and social college life. This is not to say that my fellow students were slobs or lazy. Manners are important in Mississippi, and at big social occasions (namely football games) I have never seen so many students in one place all trying to look smart. . . .

"I spent my time at Ole Miss in a constant slight state of disbelief that the 'American College Experience' was living up to the myth – and then some. This brings me to probably the question most asked about my spell there, put bluntly: 'Is it really racist down there?' Hollywood's interpretation of the South is not exactly glowing. While also not incorrect, it does not take the form one would expect.

"There appeared to be little or no antagonism along racial lines, only a sense of 'mutual segregation'. White guys hung out with white guys and vice versa, with little or no interracial dating. Certain uncomfortable words were thrown around drunkenly in company, which I admit I found surprising. But these encounters were fewer and farther between, however, than I had been led to believe and, all in all, I left with nothing but good things to say.

"I arrived back in an unchanged Edinburgh with a load of work to do, a Southern accent than can best many a New Yorker, a year that I will remember for ever [sic] and dozens of friends I'll stay in touch with. It's good to be home, but I can’t wait to get back."
– from "My year at the University of Mississippi" by Benjamin Cumming, published in The Telegraph; October 20, 2011

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In addition, here's a video tribute (w/ Kings of Leon providing the soundtrack) by a German fellow who also spent a year at Ole Miss. Have a look:

List Fest: Top colleges

c/o The Christian Science Monitor

I didn't enjoy my college experience nearly as much as I would have liked.  A combination of too much work, not enough play and an overall dissatisfaction with certain factors beyond my control, commingled with an apparent inability to focus and power my way through, is why a considerable chunk of my fondest college memories occurred while visiting friends who were away at other schools.

If you've read any of my previous posts that center upon college-themed topics (1, 2), then you know that I have occasionally daydreamed about what it would be like to have graduated from, or at least attended, a university for which I bear a lasting sense of affinity.  I have a great deal of respect for those who made the most of their college years, especially at a school that stands out like those listed below, which is why the following is of such personal interest to me.

As a tribute of sorts to our esteemed institutions of higher learning, Forbes has devised a five-point percentage-based method of ranking the cream of the academic crop.  Overall three of the top eight are found in Massachusetts and over half (13) are located in the northeastern region of the country, although not every Ivy League school is ranked among the top 25.  Have a look:

1) Williams College (pictured) – Williamstown, Massachusetts

2) Princeton University – Princeton, New Jersey

3) United States Military Academy – West Point, New York

4) Amherst College – Amherst, Massachusetts

5) Stanford University – Palo Alto, California

6) Harvard University – Cambridge, Massachusetts

7) Haverford College – Haverford, Pennsylvania

8) University of Chicago – Chicago, Illinois

9) Massachusetts Institute of Technology – Cambridge, Massachusetts

10) United States Air Force Academy – Colorado Springs, Colorado

11) Northwestern University – Evanston, Illinois

12) Claremont McKenna College – Claremont, California

13) California Institute of Technology – Pasadena, California

14) Yale University – New Haven, Connecticut

15) Carleton College – Northfield, Minnesota

16) Swarthmore College – Swarthmore, Pennsylvania

17) United States Naval Academy – Annapolis, Maryland

18) University of Notre Dame – South Bend, Indiana

19) Wellesley College – Wellesley, Massachusetts

20) Colby College – Waterville, Maine

21) Brown University – Providence, Rhode Island

22) Duke University – Durham, North Carolina

23) Pomona College – Claremont, California

24) Vassar College – Poughkeepsie, New York

25) Washington & Lee University – Lexington, Virginia 

Did You Know (or Care): S'more about the South

I've never been one to mince words about my region.  I embrace every bit of the South and accept it as being equal, at the very least, to the culture of all others.  Expanding any further on this point would invite a diatribe that most wouldn't bother reading anyway.  With that in mind...

* The Depression-era gangster George Kelly Barnes – aka, "Machine Gun" Kelly – was born here in Memphis to a wealthy family in 1895.  He graduated from Central High School and attended Mississippi State University for a time before dropping out.  Perhaps the most infamous criminal during the time of Prohibition, he spent the final 21 years of his life in prison, including a 17-year stint in Alcatraz.  He died on his 59th birthday.

* Beauregard, Alabama is a town of nearly 15,000 people located near Auburn University.  Named for General Pierre G.T. Beauregard ("The Hero of Fort Sumter" and the fifth-most senior general in the Confederate Army), both Auburn and Beauregard are situated in Lee County, which, of course, is named for General Robert Edward Lee.  And this, at present, is the only positive thing I have to say about Auburn.

* For over 60 years, before the mascot for Elon University became the Phoenix, Elon College in central North Carolina was fronted by the Fighting Christians.  The name change, accoriding to Wikipedia (via an uncredited source), resulted in 1999 because "many did not feel that the nickname was universal enough for a team making the transition to Division I athletics."

Translation: Any delineation of the Christians who founded the school, like most of the institutions of higher learning in our nation, are no longer acceptable because multiculturalism, and their ideological philosophies, now rule the roost.

To hell with their stupid labels.  I'll gladly root for the Christians.

Sunday's Quote: The conundrum of higher education

Here's more about Mamet

Allen Mendenhall is one of the more refined young thinkers of our time.  A prime exemplar of Libertarianism in its truest form, the well-educated Mendenhall recently featured a piece by The Weekly Standard senior editor Andrew Ferguson highlighting a January 2009 speech at Stanford University by David Mamet, wherein the Pulitzer-winning playwright offered his take on the current state of higher education.  Have a look:

"Higher ed, [Mamet] said, was an elaborate scheme to deprive young people of their freedom of thought.  He compared four years of college to a lab experiment in which a rat is trained to pull a lever for a pellet of food.  A student recites some bit of received and unexamined wisdom — 'Thomas Jefferson: slave owner, adulterer, pull the lever' — and is rewarded with his pellet: a grade, a degree, and ultimately a lifelong membership in a tribe of people educated to see the world in the same way.

"'If we identify every interaction as having a victim and an oppressor, and we get a pellet when we find the victims, we're training ourselves not to see cause and effect,'" he said.  Wasn't there, he went on, a 'much more interesting .  .  . view of the world in which not everything can be reduced to victim and oppressor?'"
– from "Andrew Ferguson on 'Converting Mamet'" at The Literary Order; May 16, 2011

Iconic Shot: Soulmate

Okay, you don't have to beg.  I'll marry you...

c/o The Clearly Dope

A whole lot of bounce

Anyone measuring 5-foot-11 is considered small by college and pro basketball standards.  It's also considered a largely unspoken disadvantage if the player happens to be of the Caucasian persuasion.  It's no big deal; that's just the way it is.

Thus imagine my surprise when the footage of a sub-six-foot White guy from a small Division III school who recently dominated a college dunk contest was brought to my attention.  So kick back for about three minutes and enjoy this "little" man's uncommon talent.  It may be a while before we see anything this rare again:

List Fest: Stuff bros like

A definitive list, currently 148 talking points long (and still growing), was recently brought to my attention.  Written in the same vibe as The Art of Manliness, BroBible, Every Day Should Be Saturday, Manofest and Things That Are White Trash, a blog called Bros Like This Site has compiled a list which -- unfortunately perhaps -- describes most young boys/men perfectly.

Listed below is TEC's handpicked top 25 from that bold, illustrious, and perhaps tragic list:

1. Cheerleaders

2. Ultimate Fighting (UFC, Strikeforce, M-1, etc.)

3. Fantasy football

4. Talking about lifting (weights)

5. Blindly hating opposing fans

6. Quoting movies

7. Energy drinks

8. Stories about college parties

9. Events created solely for drinking purposes

10. Talking about how wasted they got

11. Road trips

12. Making fun of tragic celebrity deaths

13. Hating hipsters

14. Giving girls nicknames

15. Arguing about whether a girl is hot

16. Not calling girls when you say you will

17. Making girls cry

18. Birth control not involving condoms

19. Not caring about the environment

20. Loving America

21. Vegas

22. Crashing parties

23. Heckling

24. Throwback jerseys

25. Talking about their dumps (bowel movements, for the less informed)

Iconic Shot(s): "God and country"

(click to enlarge)

The Cadet Chapel at the United States Military Academy in West Point, New York has been a place of Protestant worship for members of the Corps of Cadets for 100 years.
 

Photo by Ahodges7 and released to the public domain under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License

(click to enlarge)

Completed 102 years ago, the United States Naval Academy Chapel in Annapolis, Maryland, is one of two houses of worship on the grounds of the Navy's service academy.  Both Protestant and Catholic services are held there.  In 1913, the remains of the Scottish-both and American Revolution hero Captain John Paul Jones were interred in the crypt beneath the Chapel inside a sarcophagus made of 19 tons of Grand Pyrenees marble.
 

© Dan Smith

Guilty Pleasures: Stanford University

So why is one of the world's most prestigious institutions of higher learning a "guilty pleasure"?  I'll explain.

My mother and I flew from Memphis to visit my father and his side of the family in San Francisco during the spring of 1985.  Seeing Alcatraz, Fisherman's Wharf, the Golden Gate Bridge (and Park), Lombard Street and the Santa Cruz mountains exceeded any expectations that a nine-year-old could have, but visiting the campus of Stanford University in nearby Palo Alto remains my most vivid memory.

Over the years I have read about the centuries-old colleges of the northeast, and I've come to appreciate schools such as Amherst, Dartmouth, Hamilton, Middlebury and Williams, just as the academic citadels of the Southland -- College of Charleston, Duke, Emory, Vanderbilt, and Washington & Lee -- also stir no small sense of regional fervor in this unabashed Southern boy.  Yet a little something extra has persisted in my psyche from the day I visited the Leland Stanford, Jr. University a quarter-century ago.

Whether or not my obeisance to Stanford remains from a sense that I failed to make the most of my college experience is debatable.  But my post last December about Heisman Trophy voters snubbing a certain running back who just happened to lead the nation in rushing yards (1,871) and touchdowns (28) is directly attributable to having been a deeply closeted SU fan since adolescence.  Heck, I even follow head football coach Jim Harbaugh on Twitter.

I knew early in my high school years that Stanford's 3.7 GPA and 1400 SAT requirements, not to mention their 10% acceptance rate, put this fine institution well beyond my grasp.  Still I use Stanford's hex triplet [#990000] wherever red is seen on this blog.  (The Dartmouth green [#00693e] is also included as a subtle nod.)  It's just my little way of saying, I wish I could've been there.  Indeed it would have been nice to experience something like "Full Moon on the Quad," but I'll remain a devoted regardless, no matter how quixotic it might be.

As the college football season approaches...

"Thirty thousand fans don't pack into The Grove at Ole Miss to spend time under the oak trees as individuals.  Rather, we go there to take part in something greater..."

Golf Digest editor Matt Ginella toured The Grove during a rainy, but otherwise pleasant day at Ole Miss in October 2009.  Ignore the first 35 seconds of his six minute piece and have a look at what this visitor from New York was surprised to find in Oxford, Mississippi:

Lewis Grizzard would be proud

"In the East, college football is a cultural exercise.  On the West Coast, it is a tourist attraction.  In the Midwest, it is cannibalism.  But in the South, college football is a religion, and Saturday is the holy day."

-- Marino Casem, Memphis native and former head coach at Alabama State, Alcorn State and Southern University

Based on e-mail surveys of 122,000 students at 373 colleges, the University of Georgia has been named by The Princeton Review as the #1 party school in the nation.  Having made the list 10 times since the ranking was created 18 years ago, this is the first time that UGA has taken the top spot.

The campus itself, located in the quintessential college town of Athens, is surrounded by nearly 100 bars.  Thus parties are not only common, but an accepted part of life, especially during football season when students (among others) begin mingling on Thursday, and often don't stop until Monday morning.  In a related story, Brigham Young University -- way out in Utah, somewhere -- topped the list of "Stone-Cold Sober Schools" for the 13th consecutive year.  The contrast is mind-boggling.

Listed below are two links I'm posting in recognition of Georgia's most recent accomplishment.  Go Dawgs!

The 20 Greatest Things About Going to College in the South

The 17 Worst Thing About Going to College in the South

(and yes, I at least partially agree with #3)

Sunday's Quote: Carpe noctem

I've been something of a night owl since my earliest days of college when I was allowed (per my "legal adult" status) to stay up past 10:00 p.m. for the first time.  Sheltered child or not, my new found freedom quickly became an abused privilege.

By age 20, the oncoming threat of an early class at Fogelman with an instructor who had less than a full grasp of our native tongue never once stopped me from staying out past 3:00 a.m. during the week.  So I suppose it's little wonder that my occupation over the previous five years doesn't get started until well after the Sun has set.

Entrained circadian rhythms became the main side effect of many late nights and early mornings that go back nearly a decade and a half.  Yet the opportunity afforded by these odd hours, if only to think and process a considerable variety of thoughts, has proven a blessing in disguise that has led, in part, to posts like the one being read right now.

Even when not at work, maintaining these hours in my personal life also allows for the embellishment of an increasing desire for aloneness.  Although I am anything but a hermit, I have become, nevertheless, an undependable social commitment with those for whom I was once automatic.  Instead of showing up as expected, I am now more likely to jump in my ride with a fully charged iPod and drive for hours, oftentimes ending up in different counties and even States (Arkansas and Mississippi).  Perhaps the quotes below explain why.

"When from our better selves we have too long
Been parted by the hurrying world, and droop,
Sick of its business, of its pleasures tired,
How gracious, how benign is Solitude."
-- from the fourth chapter of William Wordsworth's "The Prelude"

"Solitude offers a double advantage to the thinker: the first in being with himself, the second in not being with others."
-- François-Marie Arouet (1694-1778), French writer and philosopher better known by the pen name, Voltaire

Seize the night indeed.

("Unsilent Night" © Dallas Observer, December 2009)

America's Most Unusual and Politically Correct College Courses

I'm currently working on piece tentatively entitled, "Only a Liberal can think that," and an offering from the Los Angeles Times I recently rediscovered only confirms my case.  Listed below are just some of the college courses that could only arise from the Left Wing:

* "Taking Marx Seriously: Should Marx be given another chance?" -- Amherst College

* "The Phallus" -- Occidental College

* "Sex Change City: Theorizing History in Genderqueer San Francisco" -- University of California, Berkeley

* "Queer Musicology" -- University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA)

* "Border Crossings, Borderlands: Transnational Feminist Perspectives on Immigration" -- University of Washington

* "Adultery Novel" -- University of Pennsylvania

* "Drag: Theories of Transgenderism and Performance" -- Hollins University

* "Nonviolent Responses to Terrorism" -- Swarthmore College

* "Sex, Rugs, Salt, & Coal" -- Cornell University

* "Lesbian Pulp Fiction" -- Hollins University