WVU reawakens

Living in a town that fundamentally doubles in population every August, then dwindles back down gradually until, after a final death spasm in the late Spring, it is back to its former size, I long ago became philosophical about the carnage of the new student invasion.

As West Virginia University has always had such a richly deserved reputation as a party school, we do get our share of students who see attending college not as an attempt at higher learning, but a ritual of dodging the weightier aspects of adulthood in favour of the MTV-version of adulthood: beer, pot, sex.

My biggest gripe? The traffic. Gridlock returns with a vengeance. I can avoid the majority of risk to self and property by just not driving into the bar district at night. I don't live in a dorm, so that's another way I avoid the stench of vomit and the sounds of unchaperoned eighteen year olds getting their first real beer buzz on.

The secondary effects of the sudden sense of freedom are mostly visited upon the newly free...the physical injuries, the rape (85% of all rapes occur under the influence of alcohol) and the mid term realizations that having spent more on Budweiser (at the encouragement of local businesses who do not give a damn about you beyond how much you will spend on whatever they sell) than books means you get to go home and work on Dad's farm after all.

I recall several years ago when WVU played Notre Dame for the national title in football. One statistic bandied about was the difference between Freshman and Sophomore classes at the respective schools. At the time a stat was offered up that 40% of the Freshman class at WVU did not return for their Sophomore year. I don't know about you, but if I ran a high school where almost half my students dropped out betwwen year one and year two, I'd be fired and the feds would launch a probe.

So much for higher learning.

But it is an annual ritual, the influx of Freshmen and the upperclassmen who have waited patiently to see someone lower on the food chain finally arrive. I learned long ago, when I was a student, to take it with a resigned grace and a faint smile, knowing that a few were here for valid reasons and woud transcend the rites of passage that makes an interesting double entendre of "higher education".

Welcome back, Mountaineers.