Annual Beloit College List of Class of 2013

[alcibiades_mystery]

These lists help put the students' knowledge in context. Enjoy:

http://www.madison.com/tct/mad/latest/462475

1. Author Theodore "Dr. Seuss" Geisel, Queen singer Freddie Mercury, "Star Trek" creator Gene Roddenberry, actor Michael Landon, Miles Davis, Martha Graham, Pan American Airways and The Dallas Times Herald have always been dead.
2. Dan Rostenkowski, Jack Kevorkian, and Mike Tyson have always been felons.
3. The "green giant" has always conjured up images of Shrek, not the big guy picking vegetables.
4. They have never used a card catalog to find a book.
5. Margaret Thatcher has always been a former prime minister.
6. Salsa has always outsold ketchup.
7. Earvin "Magic" Johnson has always been HIV-positive.
8. Tattoos have always been very chic and highly visible.
9. They have been preparing for the arrival of HDTV all their lives.
10. Rap music has always been mainstream.
11. Chocolate chip cookie dough ice cream has always been a flavor choice.
12. Someone has always been building something taller than the Willis (formerly Sears) Tower in Chicago.
13. The KGB has never officially existed.
14. Text has always been hyper.
15. They never saw the "Scud Stud" (but there have always been electromagnetic stud finders).
16. Babies have always had a Social Security Number.
17. They have never had to "shake down" an oral thermometer.
18. Bungee jumping has always been socially acceptable.
19. They have never understood the meaning of RSVP.
20. American students have always lived anxiously with high-stakes educational testing.
21. Except for Barack Obama, the president has never inhaled. (Obama is the first president in their lifetime who admitted smoking marijuana.)
22. State abbreviations in addresses have never had periods.
23. The European Union has always existed.
24. McDonald's has always been serving Happy Meals in China.
25. Condoms have always been advertised on television.
26. Cable television systems have always offered telephone service and vice versa.
27. Christopher Columbus has always been getting a bad rap.
28. The American health care system has always been in critical condition.
29. Bobby Cox has always managed the Atlanta Braves.
30. Desperate smokers have always been able to turn to Nicoderm skin patches.
31. There has always been a Cartoon Network.
32. The nation's key economic indicator has always been the Gross Domestic Product (GDP).
33. Their folks could always reach for a Zoloft.
34. They have always been able to read books on an electronic screen.
35. Women have always outnumbered men in college.
36. They have always watched wars, coups, and police arrests unfold on television in real time.
37. Amateur radio operators have never needed to know Morse code.
38. Belarus, Moldova, Ukraine, Uzbekistan, Armenia, Latvia, Georgia, Lithuania, and Estonia have always been independent nations.
39. It's always been official: President Zachary Taylor did not die of arsenic poisoning.
40. Madonna's perspective on Sex has always been well documented.
41. Phil Jackson has always been coaching championship basketball.
42. Ozzy Osbourne has always been coming back.
43. Kevin Costner has always been Dancing with Wolves, especially on cable.
44. There have always been flat-screen TVs.
45. They have always eaten Berry Berry Kix.
46. Disney's Fantasia has always been available on video, and It's a Wonderful Life has always been on Moscow television.
47. Smokers have never been promoted as an economic force that deserves respect.
48. Elite American colleges have never been able to fix the price of tuition.
49. Nobody has been able to make a deposit in the Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI).
50. Everyone has always known what the evening news was before the Evening News came on.
51. Britney Spears has always been heard on classic rock stations.
52. They have never been Saved by the Bell
53. Someone has always been asking: "Was Iraq worth a war?"
54. Most communities have always had a mega-church.
55. Natalie Cole has always been singing with her father.
56. The status of gays in the military has always been a topic of political debate.
57. Elizabeth Taylor has always reeked of White Diamonds.
58. There has always been a Planet Hollywood.
59. For one reason or another, California's future has always been in doubt.
60. Agent Starling has always feared the Silence of the Lambs.
61. "Womyn" and "waitperson" have always been in the dictionary.
62. Members of Congress have always had to keep their checkbooks balanced since the closing of the House Bank.
63. There has always been a computer in the Oval Office.
64. CDs have never been sold in cardboard packaging.
65. Avon has always been "calling" in a catalog.
66. NATO has always been looking for a role.
67. Two Koreas have always been members of the UN.
68. Official racial classifications in South Africa have always been outlawed.
69. The NBC Today Show has always been seen on weekends.
70. Vice presidents of the United States have always had real power. (They are most aware of Vice Presidents Al Gore and Dick Cheney, who were given distinct responsibilities by the presidents they served under.)
71. Conflict in Northern Ireland has always been slowly winding down.
72. Migration of once independent media like radio, TV, videos and compact discs to the computer has never amazed them.
73. Nobody has ever responded to "Help, I've fallen and I can't get up."
74. Congress could never give itself a midterm raise.
75. There has always been blue Jell-O.

[Jennicut]

1. No card catalogs. In the late 90's when I was in college they were just getting rid of them.

Also, these young adults are not missing anything by not seeing Saved by the Bell, believe me. Yuck, one of the worst shows from my youth.

[XemaSab]

8. The local JC here in Redding

uses Dewey decimal and has a card catalog. :o

It's like being back in 1992! :D

[Berry Cool]

2. It's getting to the point where more of these facts are a "reach" than a shock to discover.

I mean, a lot of these things probably don't even have relevance to their lives in any way to the point that they even know about them. I mean, how many of today's entering college freshmen know or care who Martha Graham was or that a publication called The Dallas Times Herald existed?

I mean, I could have said that for the class that entered in about 2000, the Cleveland Press had always been dead, but...who cares?

How many of them KNOW that salsa outsells ketchup, or care?

"They have never understood the meaning of RSVP"? That's a reach, and if they don't, it has nothing to do with when they were born.

How many outside Atlanta, or baseball fanatics, know who the Braves' manager is?

How many know or care about the Gross Domestic Product (GDP)?

How many ever knew or cared about how President Zachary Taylor died?

"Madonna's perspective on Sex has always been well documented"? That's supposed to be shocking? What would be more shocking is if we had a generation of which we could say that it had no recollection of her "Sex" days at all.

"They have always eaten Berry Berry Kix"? Big deal.

How many know, or care about, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International?

Lots of examples like that in here. You know, ones where they looked up a bunch of historical facts from around the time these kids were born and then recast them as "amazing facts" about the incoming freshman class that are supposed to put their age into perspective for you. But they really don't pass the "amazing" test, most of them. What they need is less in the way of historical fact and more in the way of pop cultural stuff that makes their elders more aware of their youth.

Such as this:

The day the space shuttle Columbia exploded, I was moving my stuff to a new city I was going to live in after grad school. In the coming years, I began to feel old when grown people would say things to me like "Oh, I remember that day. The teachers made us watch the launch in school and they were all crying."

Then I started to feel even older when I'd meet adults who said things like "I don't really remember it, but my older brother remembers watching it in school."

Then I started meeting adults who said "Oh yeah, the Columbia explosion! It happened before I was born, but I remember them teaching us about it in school."

THAT's the kind of stuff that really brings it home.

Such as...

This entering college class doesn't really remember back when Kristi Yamaguchi used to skate. Loved her on Dancing with the Stars, though.

They laugh at the idea that college campuses ever trumpeted how "wired" they were.

They don't really remember Johnny Carson.

They don't recall ever having to use the Mosaic web browser.

The Berlin Wall has always been history to them.

They think of fax machines as ancient devices that are no longer needed.

The Olsen Twins have always been older than them.

Ozzy Osbourne has always been a guy who used to be on a reality show with his family.

9/11 is something they keenly remember from how frantic their parents were to pick them up from grade school on that day.

They have never thought of Japan, specifically, as a serious threat to their economic way of life.

If you showed them the Saturday Night Live parody commercial for "Crystal Gravy," they wouldn't get it unless it was explained to them.

[Xithras]

7. The list has never been about what the college kids care about. It's for teachers.

The list was generated for other college instructors (like myself), to help keep us from making cultural references or assumptions in our classrooms that our students might not get. Yes, some of the references are very localized, but the list is still generally useful.

We get a local version here targeted at the students coming into our college. One of the interesting lines from this years list was: "Your students have never experienced a major earthquake." As a native Californian, I'd never really thought about that.

[XemaSab]

9. Don't you mean Challenger?

Columbia exploded less than 10 years ago.

[slampoet]

3. What Baloney. I am class of the late eighties YET i know.....

I know what the last Castrati sounded like and have heard the voice of Thomas Edison

I know how to cut a vinyl recording master on a lathe and how to press a "mother" from it.

I know how to start a fire w/o matches.

I can saddle my own horse and rig horses to pull in teams of up to 6

I can make and can up my own pickles and other preserves.

I can sew with or without any machine that has been on the market

I can find my way at sea with only the stars and can rig the sails to do so

I have eaten something i killed with a bow that i made.

I can make a variety of foods from recipes that date back to 1580

I can tie 12 different knots

My girlfriend is younger than me but she can make her own cheese and is better with horses than i am

i can slaughter livestock properly and have done so with rabbits, pigs, and chickens.

I have made a violin out of a cornstalk

I have met a Zegfield Follies dancer, a cockfighter, and a bootlegger (who taught me how to make wine)

i know seven board games that you can play with found objects on the ground and checkers/chess aren't one of them.

I know the difference between Sarah Bernhardt and Sandra Bernhard

I know more about Les Paul than the 60 year old reporters that gave his obits.

I know enough about history to realize that every 3 years an other stupid version of this list of things kids don't know circulates through whatever media is around whether it is the Morning Gazzette, Ann Landers, Xerox copies, or the internet.

Here is the kicker....I was Born in Detroit not on a farm like my grandparents.


These lists just make older people look like prejudiced fools. Don't fall into that trap. Aren't you better than your parent's generation?

Think about it.

Did you ASK a single one of these questions of a person who is class of 2013 ????

Or did you assert your prejudice without ONCE confirming your information.

If you didn't ask these questions to arrive at your conclusion, you are using Fox News' techniques.


Anyone silly enough to circulate this list reminds me of the scene in the Flintstones movie where Barney is knocking two rocks together and failing to get a spark. Finally he throws his hands to the heavens in desperate frustration and yells "I have Become my Father!!"


Please stop spamming this list with disinformation to make us value our children less.

[Name removed]

4. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[slampoet]

5. You think a punchline for a joke is "Enjoy"?

PS - lack of ability to tell a joke shows what generation you are and are not.


Remember, sarcasm on the internet is like tap dancing on the radio, no one can make sure what you are doing w/o you saying so ahead of time.

[alcibiades_mystery]

6. What are you babbling about?

[slampoet]

10. FU is your idea of discourse and yet you are asking me to explain a post you didn't read?

Your sense of entitlement is palatable. Typical webmaster.