2002-08-12 - 11:30 p.m.
They used to call it LARD week. Which seemed apropos for the kind of week it was: exhausting, excessive, bad for your blood pressure. LARD was an acronym for the annual debacle otherwise known as Late Application Review Days, the final week before classes begin in the fall when the institution throws open the doors, throws out their standards, and issues a good ole' Midwestern hog-call to the public at large: "You wanta go ta college? Well, C'MON IN!" Even though they have been mickey-mousing around about deadlines and qualifications (with the conscientious students who plan ahead) for months, the Upper Management of this place is so desperate to lure in any paying customer, they willingly suspend all rules and admit anyone who can claw his or her way to the top of the heap during the annual fall free-for-all. Privately, I used to call it Lazy Ass Rejects Days. But only privately.
I can understand that there may be perfectly good reasons why someone might not know they wanted to enroll until a few days before classes started. But the perfectly-good-reason folks are overwhelmed, in this particular scenario, by the droves of people who just sobered up one morning and thought "What the hell, I can't think of anything else to do, I guess I'll go to college." And it is the What-the-hell people who have the biggest attitudes, who come in angry because it isn't easier for them, because they have to wait, because there are lines. So they whine and throw fits. They lie down in the hallways and stick their feet out so you have to step over them to pass by, and make disgusting messes in the restrooms. They fill up the staff parking lot with their illegally parked cars, and fill up the staff lounge with their illegally parked butts.
The Upper Management at Kryptonite University is always trying to think of how they can further accommodate this mob. And since their priorities are always with image over substance, the decision was made that we should call it something different. LARD was unfriendly. LARD didn't send the right message: after all they aren't really "late" applications if we accept them, are they?. Never mind that the public had probably never heard the acronym. They just didn't want the staff to have a handy, negative sounding term for the worst week of the year. So they changed it to: Walk-In Review Days. That would be either "WIReD" or "WIeRD" however you choose to say it. Which is so much more friendly than LARD, it just warms my heart.
To add to the joy of this occasion, this year they are giving out free popcorn and helium balloons. Do these students feel better about paying thousands of dollars in tuition (Oops.... we can't use that bad word "tuition".....students here pay only "educational fees") if they think it is going to be just like an amusement park? When I was a freshman in college ( I know that was a hundred years ago, but still....) I was trying to feel all grown up and independent, and I would have been totally humiliated by having to walk around clutching a balloon all day. But hey, maybe that's just me. No, actually they look humiliated.
And after all the talk about friendliness, last year on the first day of school, there were high pressure water jets dousing the front entrance and the sidewalks leading up to this building. So people were forced into the busy street to try and avoid being drenched. On their first day of school. At this friendly place.
I don't necessarily blame the students for being frustrated about a lot of things (Other than some of the what-the-hell students, who just seem to live in ways that create frustration for themselves.). Because there are people here (actually entire offices) who use all the power they have to create roadblocks. All the power they can get in their underpaid, unexciting little lives seems to come from making life stink for as many people as possible. Saying no. Refusing to listen. Refusing to help.
The first day of We're Internally Really Disfunctional week.
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