The alma mater strikes again

You know it's August: The yellow jackets are back, your humble host is losing sleep pending the start of the school year, there's no good network TV, and my (and Stacie's) alma mater, Beloit College has released its "Mindset List":

Each August, as students start to arrive, Beloit College releases the Beloit College Mindset List, which offers a world view of today's entering college students. It is the creation of Beloit’s Keefer Professor of the Humanities Tom McBride [I know him!] and Director of Public Affairs Ron Nief.

McBride, who directs Beloit’s First Year Initiatives (FYI) program for entering students, notes that "This year’s entering students have grown up in a country where the main business has become business, and where terrorism, from obscure beginnings, has built up slowly but surely to become the threat it is today. Cable channels have become as mainstream as the 'Big 3' used to be, formality in dress has become more quaint than ever, and Aretha Franklin, Kermit the Frog and Jimmy Carter have become old-timers." [. . .]

The list is distributed to faculty on campus during the New Students Days orientation. According to McBride, “It is an important reminder, as faculty start to show signs of ‘hardening of the references,’ that we think about the touchstones and benchmarks of a generation that has grown up with CNN, home computers, AIDS awareness, digital cameras and the Bush political dynasty. We should also keep in mind that these students missed out on the pleasures of being tossed in the back of a station wagon with a bunch of friends and told to keep the noise down, walking in the woods without fearing Lyme Disease, or setting out to try all of the 28 ice cream flavors at Howard Johnson’s.”

According to Nief, “This is not serious in-depth research. It is meant to be thought-provoking and fun, yet accurate. It is as relevant as possible, given the broad social and geographic diversity of our students, who are drawn from every state and 50 countries. It is always open to challenge, which has an additional benefit in that it reminds us of students’ varied backgrounds. It is still a good reflection of the attitudes and experiences of the young people that we must be aware of from the first day of their college experience.”

Last year, I actually had a chance to call in to Ben Merens's public raido show (Ben was on vacation, though) and share my recollection with Beloit professor and ex-husband of the state senator Art Robson, since I was at Beloit when the first mindset list was released. Now it's all very formal and even comes with a little ®. And, as usual, it's a bizarre collection of things that supposedly identify this post-millenial generation.

I won't reprint the whole thing (the ® may will mean a lawsuit!), but here are a few favorites:

1. Andy Warhol, Liberace, Jackie Gleason, and Lee Marvin have always been dead.
14. Car stereos have always rivaled home component systems.
18. The federal budget has always been more than a trillion dollars.
26. Dirty dancing has always been acceptable.
32. Judicial appointments routinely have been "Borked."
53. They do not remember "a kinder and gentler nation."
75. They have always been challenged to distinguish between news and entertainment on cable TV.

In a couple of weeks, I will be turning 29 for the third time. (I like my shirts roomy, hint hint). I am so old.