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Here, I knew, was the most evil thing ever to be sent through email. Worse than chain letters. Worse than advertisements. Worse, even, than ‘Snood.’
BROCKLESBY
THE WISE FOOL
15 September 2000
22 September 2000
29 September 2000
6 October 2000
27 October 2000
3 November 2000
10 November 2000
17 November 2000
2 February 2001
16 February 2001
23 February 2001
2 March 2001
30 March 2001
30 March 2001
6 April 2001
27 April 2001
4 May 2001
We read the books, but when it comes time to discuss, we may as well be hearing roll call in Ferris Bueller’s economics class.
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COMMENTS ON THE PASSING PARADE
Observations on the Eve of Spring Break
By Michael J. Ballway
CRUSADER COLUMNIST
I
t was another one of those lazy Thursday afternoons on the Hill, and I had just finished deleting my fifty-third consecutive Student Programs email, the one about that speaker that the school has hired to lecture us on the subject of Mexico, or on the subject of The Black Experience, or on the subject of Interwar Jewish Cinema, or possibly on the subject of The Black Experience in Mexican Jewish Interwar Cinema -- free refreshments will be served ... in any event, I deleted it. I think that's the one I deleted. Maybe it was the internship offer for a fabulous job in Boston, or in New York, or in Providence, or maybe it was Boston again. It wasn't anywhere near the modest Midwestern metropolis from which I hail, though, so their Boston Summer Research might as well be an unpaid apprenticeship to a village traffic cop in East India. That's not today's rant, though. So I had just finished deleting these email staples of daily life when another email crossed my desk. This one I deleted also. This reporter finds that when you're a junior, the SGA Bus that you loved so much as a sophomore really doesn't matter anymore. That's not today's rant either, though. It was the next email that really caught my eye. "SPRING BREAK IS COMING," it said, "ARE YOU PREPARED?" Just then my phone rang. I tore my eyes away from the captivating subject line (nestled in my horribly cluttered inbox like a diamond clutched by the carbonic mass of a dozen unread Career Planning missives) and found that the voice on the other end of the line was none other than Holy Cross' resident master of confusion, Joey Brocklesby '03. He wanted to know what the email was about, why it had been sent, what purpose it was achieving. I told him to try reading it. "The time of reckoning is at hand," he read to me over the phone, "repent now or your immortal soul, and possibly also your airline tickets, will be consigned to eternal damnation!" I quickly dragged the email into my "trash" folder, daring not to open it myself. Here, I knew, was the most heinous, unimaginably evil thing ever to be sent through email. Worse than chain-letters. Worse than advertisements. Worse than viruses. Worse, even, than "Snood." This was, as the College had been warning us for the last week, the correspondence, the proselytization, the brainwashing, of a cult. They're out there, I guess. They go by many names, they recruit both subtly and overtly, they -- as the Chaplains' Office email stated -- will even manipulate scripture to justify their faith. Yes, we here at Holy Cross need to keep on eternal vanguard against the intrusion of strange or demanding religions into our lives.
The past week has seen the burning of the palms on Ash Wednesday and, today, the introduction of meatless Fridays for the duration of Lent, the forty-day period in which we reflect on the death of our Lord in anticipation of the Resurrection. During the Lenten season, dreary music will be played at the Chapel and faithful Catholics will be asked to give up a favorite food or hobby in order to mimic the deprivation and fasting of our Lord, as written in (for example) Chapter 4 of the Gospel of Matthew. But don't let all that ruin your week. Remember, we're about to embark on another time-honored tradition at Holy Cross: ten days of rest and relaxation in tropical locales, or at least watching other people rest and relax on MTV, and a grace period between classes during which our professors will expect us to read fifteen books and write twenty pages of research papers. What could be more fun? After Spring Break, though, it's back to dreary Lent, where the only entertainment is the Yankees vs. Red Sox insult-athon on Page 18 of The Crusader. Go to class, go to Kimball, go to sleep, go slowly insane while the guy who sits next to you maintains the exact same perfect silence that you do. In this school that tolerates nothing ugly on its lawns, its walls, or its precious black rails, the attitude of beauty preservation spills over into the classroom. I worry about the mental health of our professors sometimes, as they struggle to engage a 30-student room and meet only silence. When we're put on the spot and singled out, at least fifty percent of us seem to have read the text, but nobody -- almost every time, nobody -- raises his hand and volunteers an answer. We've all heard that the CIA recruits heavily from Holy Cross' alumni pool; I suppose four years of maintaining a studious silence whenever the professor asks a direct question would prepare one nicely for field espionage work. There seems to be an unwritten code among us students that none of us will be the first to break the Blessed Silence, even under the great duress of fifteen minutes of pin-drop quiet. Not you, not me, not anybody. It's part of the overall homogenization of Holy Cross: nobody speaks lest he be an individual; every class is the same. Every section has the guy who insists on wearing his Abercrombie & Fitch cap throughout the lecture, the three girls wearing North Face jackets, the student with the bottle of Snapple. We march in lockstep through our days here at college, too indoctrinated to make a break from tradition or a noise in the sea of calm. We read the books but when it comes time to discuss, we may as well be hearing roll call at Ferris Bueller's economics class. On the eve of Spring Break we're beset with midterm studying and twelve-page papers and entertained by the steady influx of Student Programs emails. We will go home and see our old friends, or we'll head off to southern locales where our skins will darken and our stress will lighten. When we return from the break, we'll sink back into the tradition of tranquility and the homogeneity -- not racially, I mean, but behaviorally. For now, on the eve of Spring Break, we're carbon copies with DMB MP3s from Napster and sneakers from New Balance. Hey, but at least we're safe from those brainwashing cults. This article ran in the 2 March 2001 edition of The Crusader, on page 15 (fifth page of Features section). |