Accepted Students Day leaves much to talk about when it
comes to manipulation. The entire day is an act to try and convince/manipulate
a bunch of High School seniors to attend Hamilton. The food in Commons and
McEwen is way better than it ever is, some Professors try to be on their A
game, all the best tour guides are on duty, and all the important
administrators come out of the woodwork to act like they actually have
relationships with the students. Typically President Stewart pays off Mother
Nature to make the weather nice but I guess that didn’t work out this year.
Although I believe the spirit of the day accurately represents the Hamilton
experience (a small, close, and friendly community), the entire show is so
overblown.
Then midday there’s an event that blows it all up. The
streakers come out to play and show Hamilton’s true colors. As all the accepted
students walk across campus after the President’s opening remarks, the
streakers come running the opposite way. It is glorious. What I find encouraging
is that the school could very easily stop this. They could have the opening
remarks in the field house, thus removing the need to walk across campus or
station Campo on Martin’s Way to catch streakers (That would probably be way
over the top actually). My point is that they don’t change anything. I like to
think they secretly like it. They know they’re playing this elaborate game to
woo potential students, but like that the parents get a little shock value and
the students get a little taste of the real Hamilton.
When I came for accepted students day last year, one of the students who I talked to described the streakers as a kind of "litmus test" (I think thats the proper term). He said that he thought if you had enough of a problem with the streakers that it deterred you from choosing Hamilton as your school, we probably aren't a good fit for you anyway. Either way, I think the streaking team is a little bit of manipulation from the students' side of things, in its own way.
ReplyDeleteThis is something I've definitely thought about as well, but never quite fleshed it out as much as you have. The way you've described it makes me think of speeding. In Chicago, the speed limit is never higher than 55, yet on the main highways the flow of traffic is always 70 or above. Sure the police could start pulling tons of people over, but they don't. There's a tacit agreement that what the speeders are doing is ok. Obviously streaking is a different offense, but it's always interesting for me to see what laws are actually enforced, and what laws the enforcers let slide by.
ReplyDeleteI agree with what you're saying and I have thought about this topic alot before as well, especially in the sense of being a tour guide myself and the manner in which I sometimes feel forced to answer the questions I am asked: not exactly lying to them, but slanting my responses in a direction I know they will approve of.
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