the Sam Jackson College Experience

Sorry to have been out of the loop, it’s just midterm season here. I have been doing some other writing, though (and feel a little like I’m cheating on my blog-readers as a result) and thought I would share it to tide you over for a little bit.

My column in the Yale Herald is about ‘things that outrage me’ and is titled ‘Snakes on a What?!’ : )

The first, “Definition of rape eludes Ivy League students” is exactly what it sounds like. Here’s an excerpt:

The Yale College Class of 2011 doesn’t know what rape is. Not all 1,322 of us are completely ignorant, mind you, but a disturbing number seem to be out of the loop. During the orientation program Sex Signals, a scenario played out where the actors indicated to the audience several times that consent was lacking in a sexual encounter. When asked if we thought that a rape had been committed, the barest sprinkling of hands went up. Men and women alike rose to defend the actions of the character accused of rape, arguing that the ambiguity of the situation precipitated the rape. From a legal standpoint, there could be no question in this (admittedly fictional) case—rape had taken place. But every single Sex Signals group failed to recognize a problem with the lack of consent. This graphic failure of the newest inductees into the Yale community to collectively identify a crime is deeply troubling, but it hasn’t provoked in most of us the lingering shock which compels me to write this column now. Why hasn’t it?

The second is more lighthearted, titled “A plateful of grapes makes the long nights go by.” This one is perhaps more topical to the blog and touches back on my thoughts on the esthetic of schools and admissions offices from a few weeks ago. Excerpt below:

A bowl of grapes in the Pierson dining hall convinced me to come to Yale. The admissions office would no doubt like to know the secret of these grapes—their dark magic, and how they might harness it—but truth be told, it’s all very straightforward. My love of fruit compelled me. Visiting a school far from Napa in late fall only to find that, wonder of wonders, grapes were abundant in the dining halls, I was powerless to resist.

So… have a look, let me know what you think! I will be at the College Board forum in New York later this week (I have a little presentation on Saturday) so I am dying as I try to get everything done before I go. Hopefully I’ll see some of you readers there!

Norman Kraft of Zen Writes Inc. keeps a higher education marketing blog called “Zen and the Art of Higher Education Marketing” which I read regularly (or at least as regularly as he posts–happily, the last couple of weeks have been pretty consistent) and generally find to be very on the mark. Two weeks ago he posed an interesting question–what effect do appearances have in the context of the admissions office itself? He writes:

For many colleges and universities, admissions office space seems almost an afterthought. Too often, the office entrances are difficult to find and once found, the admissions area is hardly one of the highlights of the college tour. I’ve seen admissions officers attempt to prevent parents and students from seeing their offices by arranging meetings in open spaces on campus, or at a library or student center.

Your admissions area is your first impression, and as the old saying goes, you only have one opportunity to make a good first impression.

Let me address this question from my perspective as a student and a recent college-admissions-office-visitor. First and foremost, the admissions office is not the first impression someone has of a school when visiting. Not precisely, at least. Parents don’t blindfold their kids, drive them in erratic randomized patterns, and then lead them up to the admissions office only to then ‘unveil’ the first impression of the entire school. There is the journey to the admissions office first, and even that little step can have a significant impact. How so?

Although I knew that there were realistic constraints for space, sometimes the positioning of an admissions office alone would seem to send a message to me. Take, for example, the University of Pennsylvania admissions office: it is very convenient and easy to find because of how central it is to campus (1 College Hall, ground floor). To get there we walked through especially nice portions of the campus and a vibrant part of Philadelphia; that was the first impression of the school. My memories of the admissions office itself are not especially great because my preoccupation at the time was coping with the 105+ degree heat wave.

The real distinction between admissions offices first and foremost is SERVICE. Yes, it was a painful heat wave at Penn and that wasn’t their fault. The day before, though, the temperatures were almost as bad and I had visited both Yale and Wesleyan with my family. The biggest difference, where tour and admissions office experience was concerned (schools aside)? Wesleyan offered free bottles of water. It was also, hands down, the nicest, most accommodating, and most convincing of anywhere I visited, but that’s another story. The water was part of that. I know it’s not in the budgets for Penn and Yale to offer water to all the people who come and visit–they had rather bigger crowds–but those are some of the differences that we take away from tours. The little details that count.

Wesleyan-Yale isn’t a very fair comparison, as I’ve said. So let me use another situation with slightly more even odds: Harvard vs. MIT.

I visited MIT on March 14th, 2006–it was the first school I visited. I remember the date because it was Pi Day! Anyway, I visited MIT with my friend Greta and we got slightly lost in the infinite corridor and on campus looking around for the admissions office because MIT buildings are all designated by numbers are we weren’t paying that much attention since it was our spring break. Something like that. We found the office in the end and it was a messy place inhospitable to visitors–we were sent elsewhere for our tour and info talk. It felt like the reception / office ratio was off. All the same, we had a good time at MIT (read the visit report).

Compare with Harvard: we wandered over to Radcliffe yard and found the admissions office after some searching, but given Harvard’s visitor volume what happened next was unfortunate. We were sent from a messy office environment to what looked like a semi-dilapidated basement auditorium where we were told about how selective Harvard was before being sent out on the worst college tour in my complete touring experience.

There were many similarities in presentation and aesthetic experience, but when I ask Greta or think myself about the MIT visit we don’t think about how the office was messy. We just think about how exciting the UROP program sounded and how friendly everyone was. The aesthetic details only come into play over at Harvard when we start trying to look for something to redeem the experience.

Are aesthetics important? Sure. But they’re not the most important part of the experience or ‘first impression,’ at least not in my mind, and it’s important to remember that. I didn’t see any places that were installing gold leaf in the admissions offices while cutting back on staff, but I just thought I’d share my thoughts on this all the same.

For the record, Johns Hopkins gave out free water bottles a few days later when it was equally hot.

What would college be without participation in random psych experiments?

I won’t be able to personally answer that question because I’m going to have to be a guinea pig in some experiments in order to meet the pretty easy lab requirement for my intro psych course, taught by the excellent Marvin Chun. Signing up for the ‘experiments server’ there is a one hour intro survey which counts for a credit of participation. Some of the questions were normal, but some were pretty weirdly specific. The first two big sets were about spiders and snakes, which questions like:

If I came across a spider now, I would get help from someone else to remove it. T/F

Although it may not be so, I think of snakes as slimy. T/F

I am terrified by the thought of touching a harmless snake. T/F

I would be somewhat afraid to enter a room now, where I have seen a spider before. T/F

And I’m just thinking to myself… are most of the studies the psych department is doing this fall about spiders and snakes? Maybe this is the norm for such things; I have no idea. Some of the sociological questions were pretty creepy, too: “Its OK if some groups have more of a chance in life than others.” (1-7) or “Some groups of people are simply inferior to other groups.” Scary.

Lastly, I kept finding the phrasings really funny as the later sections used the term ‘close others’ to describe some weird friend-romantic-family-amalgam with whom one might share secrets, turn to for support, etc.

Anyway I didn’t sign up for any of the first few studies because of timing, but hopefully I’ll have some fun ones to report back about. I can’t get any money for anything I do for credit, but some could be fun on their own. Hopefully.

Some of you may be familiar with the concept of naked parties popular at college campuses across the nation but perhaps especially Yale; in any event, I thought I would attach a relevant email sent to the freshman class about something its anonymous author purports to be the first Pundit-sponsored prankish naked party of the year. I was out all afternoon participating in a fun Trumbull-freshmen-only scavenger hunt across campus, and came back to find this:

Dear Freshmen,

Some of you were visited several nights ago by upperclassmen who delivered to your suites invitations to “The Masquerade.” The invitations read:

“You and one guest are cordially invited by a distinguished group of peers to attend the Masquerade on Saturday, the Fifteenth of September. Please arrive in formal attire at the gates to the Hall of Graduate Studies at nine thirty post merediem. Tell no one and do not be late. Non Ducor, Duco.”

An image of the invitation, for your reference, is attached. Some of you may be under the impression that you have been tapped for something, or invited to a gathering hosted by a secret society, such as the Yale Society for the Exploration of Campus Secrets (YSECS).

Sadly, this is not the case. Your ‘hosts’ are the Pundits, the infamous Senior pranking society.

Should you choose to go to the gates of the HGS this evening, here is what will happen:

1) You will be led to an off-campus location by the Pundits.

2) There will be a party there.

3) Before very long, and at a certain cue, the Pundits will take off all of their clothes.

4) You will feel rather awkward, unless you’re into that sort of thing.

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First, I got a callback for one of the improv groups that I tried out for last night, The Purple Crayon! The Purple Crayon is the only group on campus that does long-form improv, which is where they take one suggestion and then create a whole show out of it. I think it’s absolutely fantastic and was blown away from the two shows of theirs that I went to. I tried out for the Ex!t Players too but that apparently didn’t go quite well enough to merit a callback. I am surprised to have gotten one for Purple Crayon as is. I don’t expect to make it past this next round of culling, but who knows? We shall find out soon enough. Icannot gush enough about how much I love the Yale improv groups, they’re all pretty uniformly fantastic.

I was also up much much too late last night working on a website for the Freshman Class Council elections, which you can see at http://www.samjackson.org/FCC. If you’re a freshperson in Trumbull reading this, please consider voting for me and joining the Facebook group! If you’re in Trumbull at all, consider voting for me for the YCC–many of my same ideas apply to both. And if you’re not in either, check it out anyways, I put a lot of time into it and puppies are involved.