Dear Elizabeth,
Welcome to the class of 2007.
According to the Office of Admissions, you were selected from a talented and remarkably competitive group. Your class’ average SAT score and class ranks are among the highest Boston University has ever seen. The College of Arts and Sciences has deemed you eligible for the Honors Program. The Office of Housing has guaranteed you a place for the next four years. And according to the Student Activities Office, BU has hundreds of extracurricular and intramural activities.
By now, Elizabeth, you’ve sent in your deposit, toured the campus and penciled in Sleeper Hall as your first housing choice. You are pretty sure you want to major in history, study Italian and travel abroad. Your mom already has a BU sticker on her car’s rear window, and you live in the Terriers sweatshirt you suckered your dad into buying at Barnes ‘ Noble. You have read informational brochures and spent a Freshman Friday eating donuts and meeting a couple thousand of your potential classmates. But as your older sister looking back on her four years at BU, I realize that glossy leaflets and tours through Mugar Library do not even scratch the surface of the BU experience.
BU is not your typical undergraduate university. There are no rolling hills, no wrought-iron gates and no campus quad. Students live in everything from apartment towers to brownstone apartments and from converted hotel rooms to the overpriced slums of Allston/Brighton.
School spirit is hard to come by. We have a hockey team, some Beanpots and a grinning terrier on skates, but our unprofitable football team was cut five years ago, and our baseball team was run out of town shortly thereafter. Our stadium is now home to the Boston Breakers. We have a homecoming, but we never know when it is, our parents never come and the highlight is a freak-ridden carnival in the back parking lot of CAS.
Our School of Management is a marble monstrosity towering over Commonwealth Avenue. A tribute to financial success, it has a state-of-the-art library, internet access in every classroom and a staircase that allegedly cost a million dollars. The College of Communication, one of the best in the country, is crumbling to dust, doesn’t have a television station and has a radio station you have to listen to online. BU, having lost (and found) a sizeable donation from the Mugars, has let its library fall into disrepair the books are dated, the computers scarce and the hours inconvenient.
Our chancellor has spent the last three decades changing BU from a commuter school into a prestigious, nationally ranked university. He recruited famous (and infamous) professors from around the world and rebuilt the university from the ground up. He was the impetus behind the Chelsea program, brought in professors like Elie Wiesel and Saul Bellow and once ran for governor. At the same time, he’s disbanded the Boston University Academy’s Gay-Straight Alliance and refused to include homosexuality in the non-discrimination policy. He thinks girls can be a distraction to young men’s studies, believes opposite-sex sleepovers lead to voyeurism and maintains BU does not need a rape crisis center.
Our Student Union plans and allocates funding for student activities. But most of the time they fight among themselves. Senators resign and are impeached regularly. Sure, wielding power over our undergraduate student fees probably goes right to their cowboy-hat-topped heads, but most of the blame falls on students themselves for taking little interest in their chosen government.
Some students use the aisle in the George Sherman Union as their personal fashion runway and park their shiny imports on Bay State Road; others worry about student loans and work two jobs to pay rent. Likewise, the good comes alongside the bad at BU. You will have some of the greatest professors in the Northeast maybe even the country at your disposal, but you will also face the bureaucracy of a conservative, outspoken, out-of-date chancellor and a strong sense of individuality that makes the student body seem cold and apathetic.
As you prepare for your stay at BU, I am finishing my final column, packing my bags and planning to move halfway across the country. For you, Elizabeth, the class of 2007 and students already at BU, graduation is closer than you think. Despite the unfulfilled expectations and unconventionality, I hope BU prepares you for whatever lies ahead.
And remember, Liz, if you have any complaints, you know how to write.
Love always,
Your older sister, Denise
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