Striking Back for the Alma Mater
Student X
Issue date: 1/31/06 Section: features
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Versus Magazine Online [Image Edition]
Children of Vanderbilt, all you Commodores and 'Dettes, I hope that by relating the story of my Winter Break, I can inspire you toward the same epiphany that gripped me the night of December 22, when I entered my house from the cold outside and picked up the Vanderbilt Magazine in the mail pile, rifling through it, and finding the unassuming article that would shake my life.
The epiphany came in two parts: first, we as college students assume too often, sequestered in this incubator of a university, that we can exact no real change in the world until our diplomas grant us the right to do so. Second, that this assertion is nonsense. Our muscles contract like anyone's, and our brains tick with equal constitution. The world, I suddenly knew as both elation and anger stirred my marrow, is ours to shape.
This isn't an article about ASB, Alpha Phi Omega, Vanderbuddies or the Manna Project, although those are all vehicles for the transformative energy I felt after reading that critical article. This article is about my own personal quest.
You see, I have always wanted to go to a college with a bell tower. Nothing symbolizes academic snobbery and the spirit of the ivory "tower" as well as a defiant, phallic thrust at the sky, singing its own peculiar alma mater on the hour. So imagine my satisfaction with our stately, solid prince of a tower, audible at football games and visible from the plane I took home.
And imagine my shocked anger when, in an article about Vanderbilt myths in the university magazine, I read that a visitor to the bell inside the tower found "Princeton" painted across its surface, a blatant act of unforgivable vandalism. I wasn't even aware that Vanderbilt and Princeton were rivals in any way: the news reeked of northern prejudice. (Speaking of this, where is our natural counterpart to the north's Ivy League? The Kudzu League, they'd call it - Vandy, Duke, UVA, Davidson, Wake Forest, Emory, Chapel Hill and William and Mary?) There was not even a decision to be made. At that moment, I simply knew that I was to do something about this outrage. But what? Chemical wash the bell? No; revenge!
Children of Vanderbilt, all you Commodores and 'Dettes, I hope that by relating the story of my Winter Break, I can inspire you toward the same epiphany that gripped me the night of December 22, when I entered my house from the cold outside and picked up the Vanderbilt Magazine in the mail pile, rifling through it, and finding the unassuming article that would shake my life.
The epiphany came in two parts: first, we as college students assume too often, sequestered in this incubator of a university, that we can exact no real change in the world until our diplomas grant us the right to do so. Second, that this assertion is nonsense. Our muscles contract like anyone's, and our brains tick with equal constitution. The world, I suddenly knew as both elation and anger stirred my marrow, is ours to shape.
This isn't an article about ASB, Alpha Phi Omega, Vanderbuddies or the Manna Project, although those are all vehicles for the transformative energy I felt after reading that critical article. This article is about my own personal quest.
You see, I have always wanted to go to a college with a bell tower. Nothing symbolizes academic snobbery and the spirit of the ivory "tower" as well as a defiant, phallic thrust at the sky, singing its own peculiar alma mater on the hour. So imagine my satisfaction with our stately, solid prince of a tower, audible at football games and visible from the plane I took home.
And imagine my shocked anger when, in an article about Vanderbilt myths in the university magazine, I read that a visitor to the bell inside the tower found "Princeton" painted across its surface, a blatant act of unforgivable vandalism. I wasn't even aware that Vanderbilt and Princeton were rivals in any way: the news reeked of northern prejudice. (Speaking of this, where is our natural counterpart to the north's Ivy League? The Kudzu League, they'd call it - Vandy, Duke, UVA, Davidson, Wake Forest, Emory, Chapel Hill and William and Mary?) There was not even a decision to be made. At that moment, I simply knew that I was to do something about this outrage. But what? Chemical wash the bell? No; revenge!