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Undercover Undergrad By Eric F. Lipton Isthmus, 5/1/06
I'm not built for this kind of lifestyle, the lifestyle of a UW undergrad. But for a week I went undercover as one: Eating their food (starchy), drinking their drinks (mixed), attending their classes (confusing), wearing their clothes (well, not technically) -- all while attempting to pass as one of them, no easy feat since I'm in my mid-30s, bald, overweight and prone to chasing them off my lawn with a rake. Seems everyone wants to understand undergrads these days. For example, the Wisconsin State Journal is regularly interviewing a passel of students, charting their social and intellectual growth like so many pencil marks on the closet door. Not to mention the prolific "Girls [and now Guys] Gone Wild" documentary series, which follows students at various spring break locales for purely academic purposes. I think biology. But my adventure was different, especially since going even slightly wild could have further upset my acid reflux. I intended, through interviews and careful examination, to answer once and for all:
Despite its bar scene, hugely popular athletics and occasional riot, UW-Madison is not a party school. It is the party school, according to both Playboy magazine and the Princeton Review, the standardized-test-prep-course-turned-college-ranking-company that has placed the university at the top of its "party school" rankings for the last few years. The Review bases its formula is based on such parental angina-aggravators as number of fraternities, alcohol consumption and recreational drug use. The UW administration is apoplectic about the ranking. We're talking Dean Wormer in Animal House angry. So it must be true. Calling the rankings "junk science" in an August 2005 press release, Chancellor John D. Wiley instead trumpeted how from 1999 to 2004, the self-reported student binge drinking rate on campus dropped from an astronomical 67 percent to merely stratospheric 59 percent. Is this proof of change? I suppose I could track down a few undergrads and ask them. From my observations so far, they don't seem to mind talking, especially loudly, on buses, about how annoying someone named "Missy" is. But apparently undergrads tend to tell authority figures only what they think authority figures want to know. Youth is wasted I started my investigation on a Thursday, which is the first day of the undergraduate weekend. (Or Wednesday, depending on your class schedule.) The plan was to awkwardly invite myself to a 21st birthday gathering, which would begin at the Nitty Gritty and end .... well, who knows .... Tijuana? Fitchburg? The Princeton Review didn't say. But I fell asleep putting my toddler son to bed that night, and by the time I woke up, it was already 9:30 p.m. I went back to bed. Friday night I meant to go out and shadow some junior-year bar-hoppers, but I was feeling a bit fluey, so I stayed in to watch "Dr. Who." But Saturday I did go out, and I grabbed drink specials at four bars: A beer at the UW student union, a Bud Light at the Kollege Klub, a Rolling Rock at Brother's and a rum and Coke-ish thing at Madhatter. The drinks were okay, the bars packed. Though I tried to appear friendly and laid back, no one talked to me. In fact, no one even looked at me. Obviously my disguise was too good. In a Wisconsin T-shirt, Wisconsin sweatshirt, Packers cap and jeans, I was the picture of a college student who bought everything they wore earlier that evening at ShopKo's provincialism department. In retrospect, I must have looked like a German tourist or a narc, but at the time I felt cunning. Know your undergrads What I was trying to approximate was the garb of a "Sconnie." Sconnie is shorthand for someone from Wisconsin, or maybe parts of Minnesota and northern Illinois. They are locked in a life-and-death struggle against " Coasties" -- out-of-state students from New York, Los Angeles or parts of Minnesota and northern Illinois. The hostility is mutual. James Yonker, a senior from Racine, says it comes from Coasties' dismissing Sconnies as "dumb farmer's kids," while Sconnies dislike the Coasties for "caring more about fashion than people." The fact that Coasties are Jewish, by and large, makes for a pretty uncomfortable reading of anti-Coastie tirades. But UW senior and Jewish Coastie Stefanie Resnick doesn't see anti-Semitism so much as a cultural disconnect. Raised in the suburbs of New York City, Resnick says there is literally a Sconnie-Coastie divide, in that they live in different places. Few students from Wisconsin choose to live in the expensive private residence halls at the edges of campus, such as the Statesider or the Towers. But out-of-state students like Resnick are told by their school counselors on the coasts, and by alumni contacts, to live at these places. "It just ends up like that," Resnick says. "I didn't know any better." However: Clothing, more than mailing address, makes the Coastie. And the look is high fashion, in a Midtown Manhattan-Loehmann's sort of way. Ugg moccasins, spandex pants and fur-lined coats are the Coastie uniform for winter, Resnick says, and short skirts with leggings and three-inch pumps are the springtime look. For men, it's still preppy, 1980s wear, though wearing the collar up is no longer required. The face of college Meanwhile, the frontlines of the war are on Facebook.com, the social-networking site beloved of college students everywhere. Intra-campus groups called the Anti-Coastie Coalition, Sconnie Nation and the Coastie Defense League can be found on the Facebook, the number-one option for students who wish to make socializing look a lot like working. Message boards feature vitriolic back-and-forths, in which Sconnies tell Coasties their "oversized sunglasses are ugly," and in response, Sconnies are asked, "Where's your cheese?" which leads to a snappy "it's in your thighs" comeback, and then Sheboygan is mocked, and it's all a bit of a downer on what is usually a very fun-loving Web site. Facebook also allows students to maintain uncomfortably personal profiles, link to "friends" near and far, and discuss whether or not Britney Spears is fat or just pregnant again. They can seek out singles or research that cute guy they met after class to discover what his favorite movies are. (Look, it's the 2004 weepie The Notebook! Cute and sensitive!) Freshman Rachel Dauschmidt, who has 239 'friends' on Facebook, says the main appeal of the site is the photo albums, which allow the worldwide sharing of hundreds of digital snapshots with friends, strangers and potential employers. But her study partner Colleen Berg says the photo albums are exactly the reason she vowed to quit using Facebook." I'd sometimes spend a couple hours a night looking up friends," she says. But the fact that people can use the site to judge her after meeting her is a turn-off. Still, Berg admits she occasionally still uses the site through Dauschmidt's account, and others': "It's hard not to be connected." Know your undergraduate bars At the UW, one very popular way to interact without alcohol is getting involved in clubs and activities. In my quest to understand the college world, I considered joining a few of these. But many involved hiking, so I just went back to the bars. Not sure what bar is right for you? Yonker took me on a tour of
various college bars, explaining how each had a personality all
its own. For example:
Of course, this list doesn't include clique-specific, keg-heavy parties at fraternities, private houses, and Mifflin Street arrest-fests. Parties play an important role for younger drinkers, explains freshman Max Kobold. For underage students, getting caught drinking in bars can lead to expensive drink tickets. Kobold got one for $239 earlier in the year. More than that, as an on-campus resident, he also has to answer to campus counselors and residential life coordinators. "They come down on you twice," he says. "It makes you really paranoid." Hitting the books When not calculating Wisconsin's toga ratio, the Princeton Review also consistently ranks the school in the top 20 academically. "This is one of the hardest schools in the country to be in," said sophomore Elliot Beldon, who is majoring in kinesiology. Last year he was at Minnesota's Winona State University, where he easily got a good enough GPA to transfer to Madison. Here, he struggles to get by, studying at least three hours a night -- sometimes even on the weekends. Which was why, on this particular weekend, he was talking to me at College Library. For most undergrads, College Library is the place to be, provided that place has to be a library. One of dozens of libraries on campus and somewhat unburdened by books, College Library is best known as a massive study hive. Open 24 hours, most days, it is filled with rows of computers, a café stocked with all your M&M cookie needs, vending machine buffets, countless couches, lounge chairs and chatty young adults (many of whom are actually studying, although in my day we were more discrete when we stashed vodka in our Aquafina bottles). Don't know much about chemistry My research was not finished. I had to go deeper undercover at great risk to myself and others: a 9:50 a.m. chemistry lecture. I would have gone to an 8:30 physics class, but I overslept. Held in the lowest level of the University's chemistry building,I ntroductory Organic Chemistry, taught by Professor Daesung Lee, is held in a lecture hall big enough for several hundred students, or 14 students comfortably. Perched enthusiastically upon a wooden seat that made airline leg room seem luxurious, I got to experience first-hand what life is like for a college student taking organic chemistry. It was a very good lecture, involving catalyzing reactions and Markovnikov's Rule, and at one point Lee very clearly detailed the breaking up of "pi bonds." At least this is what my notes say up until the point the guy behind me fell asleep, his head uncomfortably close to my shoulder. Which tickled. That's in my notes too. I also figured out that using only the symbols on the periodic table of elements, you can spell the words "tapioca," "rhino," and "brauppt." The point is, this is hard stuff, and the fact that the hall was
mostly filled at 10 a.m. on a Friday was compelling. Final grade In short, I learned a lot from my experiences walking the same halls, reading the same books, and standing too close in the same poorly laid-out men's rooms as these students. With the possible exception that I still don't understand a thing. I mean, come on. Facebook? How many pictures of drunk kids making devil horns over their friends' heads do you have to see in a day? And I'm sorry about the drinking ticket, but what did you expect? You all look like you're 11 years old! And it's a ticket, not a Les Miserables-style student uprising. Let me add: Sure, while some early adopters did okay, emo rock is boring. Admit it! And no matter how cool the white iPod ear buds are, you're going deaf with those things! And why are you wearing pajamas to class? Everyone knows you didn't actually sleep in them. And do your parents know you've pierced that? "Yeah," said
Dauschmidt, who has a steel bar running through her ear cartilage.
She has a friend who got five piercings
and a tattoo in his first two weeks at school. |
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