It seems like yesterday I arrived in
Needless to say, not everyone agreed. These are the same people breathing a sigh of relief last week as Playboy handed down a stiff punishment to the
From my personal perspective, however, this has not been the case. Two weeks from now I will be leaving a university with higher national rankings in many programs than from when I entered. In fact, if I were to be applying for next year’s freshman class with my high school record, I would most likely not be accepted. As they say, each class of freshmen at this university is more qualified than the one before it.
For these people obsessed with rankings, however, look no farther than our sociology, chemistry, education, psychology, and library and information studies programs — each of which was named as a Top 10 graduate program in the country according to the U.S. News and World Report rankings released last week. Add in as well the oft-heard factoid that our school produces more S&P 500 company CEO’s than any other school in the country, tied with a small northeastern school in
Now, we can all agree the party rankings are completely arbitrary and quite silly ways of documenting something that seems nearly impossible to quantify. That said, there is no doubt that, as a group, the students at our university enjoy partaking in quite rowdy festivities. (I mean, if we didn’t why would MTV bestow upon us the honor of our own reality show?) While it certainly does not mean everyone, it’s hard to witness the debauchery of football Saturdays (or just Saturdays in general) and not come to some general conclusion regarding how we choose to entertain ourselves.
The point, however, is this does not define us. It has always seemed to me that a student here at UW is a special breed. Yes, we party and drink, often times too much, but we also work hard; We engage ourselves within our community, and we take seriously what our goals are as a public university. It seems most understand we are not here just for one thing; we did not come just to regurgitate lectured information nor did we come just to socialize. We are all here to learn in more ways than in just the classroom, the club, the Greek organization or on free bacon night at Wando’s. We have come because we wish to grow in many ways and we know that this university is one that can provide us with that opportunity.
That atmosphere is an important element of our university and one that has continued to be our tradition for well over a century. Nationwide, people know about the
Ben White ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in political science.