Undergraduate Squalor

An "orphan precinct" is one that lacks a regular committee and chair.  We have one nearby, and I've been recruited to walk the neighborhood and deliver GOTV flyers to registered Dems.  I'm natively shy and I hate knocking on doors, but there are votes to be had and lordy-mercy don't we need every single one. The neighborhood in question is near to the university, high-density, undergraduates mostly -- 98% of the people on my lists are under 25 years old.  But the squalor!  Here are these beautiful old 1910s and 1920s arts and crafts bungalows, or the remnants of them, and they've been allowed to go to seed, or way past seed -- bricks unpointed, wood unpainted, porches sagging, screen doors ripped and hanging off.   And then the beer cans, the cigarette butts, the newspapers that have been decaying in their plastic sleeves for half a year.  Garbage strewn everywhere, foul odors.  It's disgusting, an affront to the decent citizenry.  Who are these children?  How can they live in such cisterns of filth?

I was working myself up into quite a fit until I started to think about the conditions in which I lived when I was in college, back there in the just-barely-post-diluvian 1950s.  I didn't drink alcohol, even then, or smoke cigarettes, but I lived amongst as much dirt and disorder as any modern undergraduate could manage.  When I concentrate my mind, I remember the floor of my room littered with every garment I possessed.  Every sock and every shirt grey with dirt, sweat, food droppings. I remember an ancient tattered rug that was not swept or vacuumed a single time in two consecutive semesters.  I remember a bathtub that was so foul that it was shunned by the roaches.  And am I right (my apartment mate Otis J. Brown might be able to confirm this) that we found two hundred empty Coke bottles strewn around Terry Cannon's room after he had cleaned up and moved out.  And also that our back stairs were littered with a thousand dog droppings, around which we maneuvered in and out, not thinking that such pollution was a circumstance that we might think to remedy.

Is it possible that these degenerate kids are no filthier than their venerable grandfathers?  Gives one pause.  Well, who cares, really, just so long as they get their pathetic drunken butts in gear and vote for Obama.

Incidentally, for anyone who cares:  I'm now compulsively neat and cleanly.

Comments

[Otis Jefferson Brown]

Your newfound neatness is to be applauded.

It’s a depressing fact that advancing age ravages the brain cells to such an extent that while I can tell you Carl Furillo’s precise batting average in 1953, I can’t recall how many Coke bottles we found. Speaking of brain-decay, I think you’re forgetting the extreme intellectual rigor that marked our college life. On a daily basis there were lists to be compiled, non-existent Cavalier poets to be discovered, vegetable-dye experiments to be conducted in the kitchen, street traffic to be announced in full play-by-play detail, poems to be analyzed (the work of Richard Mothpan springs to mind), college transcripts to be concocted and graduate-school applications to be completed and sent to the University of Mississippi on behalf of too-good-to-be-true academic superstars, Gilbert & Sullivan operas to be learned and sung, and who knows what else. Then, of course, to preserve mental health, one must leave time for recreation. All work and no play would have made us very dull boys indeed. Now you’re suggesting that with all these weighty matters to attend to, we were also supposed to clean up after ourselves? Please.

One can find parallels in the current political drama. Take, for example, Sarah Palin who is being unjustly maligned for spending $150,000 on her campaign wardrobe while, at the same time, being forced by a third-grader to explain her unique interpretation of the role of Vice-President - a “really neat job” that puts you “in charge” of the Senate. It’s churlish to blame Palin for being wrong on some obscure constitutional point (the Vice-President’s role isn’t even mentioned until Article 1) when there are important wardrobe issues to be addressed. I mean, you don’t just walk into Nieman-Marcus, plunk your 150 grand on the counter and walk out with your new clothes. Let’s be fair. There are countless fittings, difficult decisions to be made, not to mention alterations. It’s time-consuming. No wonder she had no time to read the Constitution. There are only so many hours in a day.

[Axel Sprengtporten]

Otis, you've omitted some crucial details. Our intellectual regimen in college was even more rigorous and time-consuming than you describe. (I know - I was there.) You seem to have forgotten that there was an intricate poetry-generating board game (played with dice) to be developed and perfected. This was no easy task to be tossed off during an idle afternoon. A great deal of careful thought had to be marshaled and put into the project. Then, you must remember, actual poems had to be generated and placed, under the nom de dice of "Rosalie Levine", in an open-to-the-public file of student writing, where "Rosalie's" somewhat opaque poems garnered largely favorable reviews.

In addition, what you so facilely describe as "recreation" (so necessary in the development of a well-rounded college student) involved a lot more than you imply. Our "recreation" was no day at the beach; it consisted of such strenuous, mind-refreshing activities as prolonged, brisk exchanges at the ping-pong table, followed perhaps by a vigorous workout at the pinball machine. Then, carefully budgeting our meagre leisure time, we'd spend a moment or two (four hours at most) socializing with friends before returning to the intellectual grind.

College students nowadays have it so easy.