Friday, October 18, 2013

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I wrote last week about Fall Break and my curmudgeonly reaction to it.  Today, I return to that line of thought, for today is the Friday of Homecoming Week at Oklahoma State University and, more than Fall Break, I do not understand it.

I know that one of the selling points of the school is that it has the largest homecoming celebration (whether of the country or the world, I do not know--and I am not certain if other countries have homecomings or something similar).  But I do not know why that should be a point of pride, why it should be a reason for younger students to spend a whole night "pomping"--putting tissue paper through chicken wire, I am told--instead of studying or sleeping, so that I expect to have...difficulty teaching (at a college!) today.  I do not know why it should be what Greek organizations (problematic already) spend their time and money on; they all have charities to support, I am told, so why they do not spend their efforts, oh, feeding the hungry or sheltering the homeless, I do not know.

Homecoming has always confused me.  Even when I was in high school, marching as a bandsman in the annual parade, playing in the stands through the inane ceremonies and thoroughly uninteresting games, I did not understand the point of celebrating the return of people who had been gone maybe one day...a week ago...to play a game.  I did not understand the desire of graduates to return to their high schools, places they had spent years regarding as prisons trying to cram useless knowledge into them--and with current educational policies, I imagine the situation of the student is worse.  And I do not know why colleges should be content to perpetuate high school ideas; part of the point of higher education is that it is supposed to supersede secondary school understandings.

For college alumni, I can perhaps understand the return to the school; I have fond memories of college, and I am proud of what I did there as I am far from being of high school.  And I can see the benefit to the school of having an organized time and place to which alumni can return; if graduates are going to pop up on campus and (necessarily) disturb the usual workings of classes and of the school, it is better to have them do it at once so that the disruption is minimized.  I further understand trying to cultivate in the current student body a modicum of respect or courtesy to those who have gone before (and, frankly, whose gifts underwrite some of the nice things on campus).  But to tie it to such a spectacle and to devote hundreds of thousands--if not millions--of dollars, to interfere with the work of teaching students so that they can be alumni of which the college can be proud, and to disrupt the workings of the surrounding city to do so, seems to me to be ludicrous.

At root, I am here to do a job, and homecoming makes it harder for me to do that job.  In my off hours, I need to be able to do things like buy groceries or get gas in my car, and homecoming makes that harder, as well.  Yet I am expected to be happy about the event...I do not understand it.

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