I spent my first night at Carolina picking through the dollar-spot at Target and trying to find someone, anyone, to bond with over neon shower caddies. UNC had organized a shopping trip for freshmen, and as an out-of-state student hunting for friends, I had thought to try my luck in high-density activities.
Conservatives like N.C. Budget Director Art Pope — who visited UNC’s campus on Tuesday — point to high rates of post-graduate unemployment and soaring student debt as incontrovertible evidence of the failure of the liberal arts education.
“It has already become a truism that only the indigent and friendless are given the supreme penalty for murder.”
Propositions: College students cannot write worth a damn. The business world values stellar communication skills. Yet universities do not teach how to write clear and precise prose.
Carolina has been awash with words this week — words that testify and words that incite, words that bridge and words that accuse. As a transgression that in many ways passes beyond speech, sexual assault has sparked a campuswide conversation about the University’s policies toward both accused students and survivors.
Artfully arrange laptop, iPad and iPhone on table. Check Facebook. Send text to friend sitting 10 feet away.
At UNC — a place that promises the resources of a big pond but the intimate feel of a puddle — there are 406 of us saturating the class rosters. And that only includes those well-adjusted individuals who make use of the silent ‘h.’
College markets itself as a formative place, the site in which we will undergo that amorphous process of self-discovery. It promises us that we will find ourselves on its quads or in its lecture halls.
Sequined jackets. Floor-length sailor dresses. Neon sweaters embroidered with panthers. The questions fall thick and fast among the morass of hangers at my favorite thrift store — who would wear a velvet jumpsuit? Is this scrap of material even intended for the human body?
Pundits flooded the airwaves with explanation after explanation for Mitt Romney’s loss. Hurricane Sandy and the liberal media conspired to take over the news cycle. Chris Christie betrayed his GOP brethren by chumming with the president. Fact-checkers have a Democratic bias. Karl Rove even blamed voter suppression efforts for Romney’s close yet definitive electoral loss.
