Posted on March 26, 2006
Of all the weekend road trips that I partake in every semester, none are as enjoyable as when I make a pilgrimage to Charlottesville to visit my good high school buddies at the University of Virginia. Whether it’s a simple birthday celebration or the yearly debauchery that is the Foxfield Races, I thoroughly enjoy a weekend getaway filled with rejoicing on the corner and midnight Gus Burgers.
This joyful experience luckily only lasts one weekend at a time, and it seems as though U.Va. is a great place to visit, but simply not a school I would ever attend. I originally had no qualms with good ol’ U.Va., but after four years of hearing from students there that JMU stands for “Just Missed U.Va.” or that the reason The Breeze comes out only twice as week is because it takes four days for our students to read them, I have had it with the cult of U.Va. that thinks they are better than JMU simply because they go “The University.”
To play it safe, although most that are eager to write in to the paper are too inept to acknowledge this point, not everyone who attends U. VA. possess said cult of snobbishness about them. I am sure many, like my comrades in Charlottesville, are normal students who are simply proud to be attending such a prestigious institution and do not act all high and mighty because of where they study.
For starters, who gives them the right to refer to themselves as “The University?” Are there not other universities that exist not only in this state but elsewhere with “university” as the first part of their name? Despite being a highly respected public institution, there are many other private and public schools that surpass U.Va.’s excellence, and then some. Yes, U.Va. is a great school, but I hate to break it to them, they are not the end all be all.
In order to be accepted into the cult, you must adopt what is termed “university-speak.” There are not freshmen, sophomores and juniors, but first years, second years and third years. Well, I guess the idea of being a super-senior and wasting Daddy’s trust fund sounds better when it’s under the nomenclature of a fifth and sixth-year title.
On a comparative level, they may have the luscious green grounds and the mahogany-floored libraries, but these luxuries are all blurred away once you take a bite from any one of their so-called dining halls on campus. If you ever have the chance, I implore you to not take the offer of eating at Observatory Hill commonly referred to as O’Hill because it’s simply O’Terrible. I would rather take my chances spearfishing for food in Newman Lake than eat that garbage.
I am sure that some nice U.Va. student reading this piece is simply going to lay the claim that I am bitter about not getting into the university. It’s not that I did not get in, but rather that I don’t want to endure four years of wearing a Lacoste wardrobe and passing off pink shorts as being fashionable. Nor did I want to pass up the opportunity to go to a university like JMU where snobbishness is significantly less than at U.Va. and where the social scene does not solely revolve around paying thousands of dollars to be in a fraternity or having to wait hours on weekends at a bar just to pay for an overpriced drink.
By and large, U.Va. is a great school, and surely anyone receiving a degree from there is to be congratulated. Many people change when they come to college, but if you ask me, I would rather become someone who holds doors for random strangers and is courteous enough to enjoy open social gatherings than sellout to the cult of superciliousness that seems to engulf the student body of U.Va. like the plague.
Craig Finkelstein is a fourth-year international affairs major.
