Here find ourselves at the end of another academic year at the College of William and Mary in Virginia. We have arrived at the time when seniors make one last desperate attempt to get laid, juniors freak out about having to declare for graduation, sophomores lose it about having to choose a major, and freshmen get drunk like college will never end. It is only appropriate that we take a moment on this, most sacred of all days, Blowout (or “Last Day of Classes” as AMP so sanitarily puts it), to pause and reflect on the year gone by.
What can one say about the Living Wage Coalition? We watched them win our support, promptly lose our support, and then sit in a building for a while. No one doubts their conviction nor the suggestion that everyone deserves a fair wage. But I’m sick of being harassed as I walk across the Terrace. No, I do not have a dollar to donate to the cause, and no, I do not want to hear about the plight of the average custodial employee. I just want to order my Quiznos in peace without being made to feel like Hitler for not signing your petition. Even College President Taylor Reveley is against you, and Reveley loves everybody: He’s like Santa Claus. At any rate, we can all say we witnessed the year of the LWC, and next year when they’ve stopped caring, we can all say, “What? What the hell is the LWC?”
We were fortunate enough to witness another excellent year for the football team (complete with another year of giggling at the name “Laycock,” tee-hee), and another year of futile irrelevance for the basketball team. Do you know how frustrating it is to make your March Madness bracket and see that every team has beaten William and Mary? It’s like rooting for the Vatican step team.
We spent another year at the mercy of the Williamsburg weather. Going from summer to spring again is always an ordeal. It’s fun going from crotch-like humidity, to unfathomable temperature swings, to clinically depressive grayness, before arriving at sinus-obliterating pollen. It’s hilarious to me now when fourth-grade level history textbooks wonder why the first few colonies here didn’t work out. British nobles spent 12 months here, said “screw that,” grabbed their prescriptions for Allegra, and went to Boston. I’m debating doing the same.
We saw the initiation of the administration’s new plan for fraternity housing. This is really a fabulous plan, because nothing discourages the horrible evils of beer pong, fun and camaraderie like giving us an entire street to ourselves. Also, in a brilliant attempt to prevent the corruption of freshmen, Yates will now be completely surrounded on all sides by fraternity buildings. I imagine the first year after the dorms’s completion will be like “Dawn of the Dead,” with backwards hats, Sperrys and “Wagon Wheel” closing in on all sides.
All of that being said, we did witness some things in which we can be proud of at our alma mater. Once again, the Marshall-Wythe School of Law, the Mason School of Business and the College as a whole continued to climb in the national rankings. Our effort towards sustainability earned us the highest grade in our history. We saw the newly admitted class of 2015 boast the highest diversity of any in the College’s history. The football team was named CAA champion, the club hockey team was crowned conference champions, and the Model United Nations team came in second in the world. That’s pretty damn impressive.
I rag on this school a lot, but sincerely, there’s no place in the entire world I’d rather be. At the end of your four years, you’re going to look back and wonder if you made the right choice. If you can look back on the last year, and as you’re packing up the bookcase you never used, the air conditioner that never worked, and the textbooks you couldn’t sell back and smile to yourself and say, “It was a good year,” then, damnit, you did something right. Have a great summer, and I’ll see you in the fall.
__Jason Rogers is a Confusion Corner columnist and has received his prescription for Allegra and train ticket to Boston. Contact Jason at jerogers@email.wm.edu.__