You can't deny local culture and values. And there's the rub, too, that we keep ironically whiffing on. Ib seeks acceptance. Let everyone with experience answer the following questions about acceptance.

1. By local customs, culture and values, who would be treated in a friendlier manner by everyday people on the streets?

A) A New Englander visiting someone in the south
B) A southerner visiting New England

2. An African-American is more likely to be middle-class in:

A) Utterly confirmed red state, Atlanta, GA
B) Utterly confirmed blue state, Boston, MA

3. Marlboro College says their mission "is best served when students experience a wide variety of ideas, opinions and cultural backgrounds." Do you expect that Marlboro College has a very wide variety of ideas, opinions, and cultural backgrounds?

A) Um maybe
B) Are you kidding me.

4. If Ibby goes to Marlboro, will he be permitted to turn his guitar up above 3?

A) Sure, why not? His dulcet tones will be heard throughout the wood-construction house-style living areas.
B) No, this chick will surely cast the deciding negative vote at the Town Meeting.

http://cellar.org/2007/woman-at-town-meeting.jpg

5. If Ibby goes to Marlboro, will he get laid?

A) No, these chicks have a lot of baggage; their sexual harrassment policy is 5000 words long and includes a compliance coordinator and a official board of six people
B) He'll probably get all 330 of the students, male and female, and two-thirds of the professors.

I can deny that they apply as a blanket characteristic of all people within a geographical region; and this is relevant because within each region, the poulation is so varied that everyone has plenty of like-minded people to interact with. So much so, that your very own circle of friends becomes, to you, what the "local" values are (considering the population density, and the very small number of people we actually encounter on a daily basis) ...

That doesn't help when dealing with the cops, the 7-11 counter guy, random shitholes at a local bar, etc.

I'll give you the cops (as a possibility), but the 7/11 guy can fuck himself - he has no power over you.
Don't like the bar you're at? You're at the wrong bar. People who don't like each other don't go to the same bars.

You'll have to give me an "etc." ...

Oh my god, flint. I'M NOT SAYING THAT SOUTHERNER = CONSERVATIVE. I don't think that your political beliefs would magically change, but guess what? Your NEIGHBORS would be different, and a lot more likely to be conservative.

If you uprooted your ass from a bar stool and moved to another bar, would your political beliefs, magically change because you were drinking somewhere different?

Or are you saying that some bars have more conservatives than others?

I don't have to guess. I live here.

I'm saying that there are different bars for different types of people. You didn't know that there are Biker Bars, Sports Bars, and Gay Bars, etc. ???

And if you feel that a certain bar may not be for you, due to a preponderance of one sort of attitude or another, you may have a preference for a different bar, I suppose.

Dude (or dudette), you've gone crazy. All this guy was trying to say is he doesn't want to go to school in the south because the south is conservative. That doesn't mean that everyone's more conservative, it just means the majority is.

I think maybe that's code for being gay friendly. Of course you are right, it is probably a very insular place. But I think that can be a good thing, depending on what you want from a school.

Ibram is artsy fartsy, liberal, and bi. He seems to be saying in this thread that he wants an artsy fartsy liberal school in Vermont. A place where he fits in. Insular can be good when you feel like you don't fit in with the real world. It's the same theory behind all black schools like Morehouse and all female schools like Smith. You have an easier time learning when you are in your comfort zone.

Marlboro seems to fit that well.

Isn't that Ibram?

Good advice glatt. I would hope that any sufficiently large school would provide a safe community for our guy, but with this one that seems assured.

Getting Dad to pony up may be an issue though...

I don't blame Ibram for wanting to go to school with a more liberal atmosphere because that is one of the biggest things about college. You can have a college that is mostly liberal and still have a conservative feel to it because of a lack of progressive action. Schools like Vermont (I'm assuming) and Minnesota have a lot of liberal action which gives it a much more liberal feel that I'm sure Ibram is looking for.

glatt I believe that the college folk, if they do not want to waste their money, should feel good about digging in with their own gender - and maybe nothing else.

College is a place to learn to think, not to dig in. It's a time to stretch and be stretched. To try on all kinds of ideas, including reaching to understand the ones you don't agree with.

B

B

A (probably)

A

B (chicks with baggage are easy :D )

Flint, what you're saying, in essence, if you'll forgive an extreme answer, that a jew in 1942 shouldnt have a problem moving to Germany, because, hey, not all Nazis are anti-semitic, and just because it's state policy that you should die, and the majority of people either agree or turn a blind eye, you could still probably find people who will accept you.

I'm not gonna live in the south, end of story. Sorry guys. Not going to convince me. I'm done living in a conservative society.

Bigot.

Why go to a college that's sure to reinforce your high school opinions?

That's the joke, Ibram. You're not done living in a conservative society. But we don't have to convince you. You'll live in the north once you get out of college, and discover on your own that there are plenty of conservatives there too.

No problem really, I give two years to recognize another form of totalitarian society. In the mean time, he's in a town where he doesn't stick out too much. Then he transfers, joins the ROTC, goes active, gets assigned to the Joint Chiefs...:)

So by that logic, there's no such thing as a liberal society in america?


That's BS. Marlboro already looks just plain perfect.




I don't get you guys' argument. There are some liberals down south, so its not a conservative society, and I'd love it there... and there are some conservatives in Vermont, so it is a conservative society, so I would hate it there?
I know where I like to be. I don't like to be in the south. It's a great place but I could never, ever live there. Just going back for a month to visit family makes me jumpy, I really do hate it there. The entire experience is grating, the religious scolding, the stares, the glares, the homophobia from every angle. I have been to the south at least twice a year every year since I was born, I lived there for four months, I know the south.
I know the south, and I know I dont want to live there.
So get the fuck off my back.

Still Godwin'd. :headshake

Btw, how exactly are people picking your sexual preference off just by sight? I'm assuming you aren't bringing a boyfriend down for the trip...

I thought sexual no-preference was the issue?

Srsly, Ib, now you like the look of Marlboro (allthat $$ and they couldn't afford the -ugh to stop it sounding like a brand of fags ....oh wait.....)

anyhoo, now use that as a search tool.

Well no, but the rainbows, tight jeans, long hair, and generally fairly feminine persona either tips them off that I'm a dayum derty faggot or a sissy little girly-boy.

No no, I'm saying you're not going to love or hate either geographical place. 100% of your college experience is the other students, the quality of your professors, the coursework you choose... basically anything outside a one-mile radius from the campus will be completely irrelevant to you for four-plus years. If you end up going to Marlboro I'm sure you will really like it there. But it will be because it's Marlboro, not because it's in the state of Vermont.

strike period add comma add dumbass

Well said, agreed completely. If I went to NYU it would be a great experience (I would imagine) not because I hate riding the subway but because of everything Clodfobble said above!

I'm going to say the opposite, actually. All of my college experience that I consider important was from the surrounding community, not just the school itself. Maybe that's just me.

What college did you go to?

University of Iowa. Super Awesome.

Get off Ibram's case why don't you? He's been in the south enough to know he doesn't want to live there, so why do you try to change his mind?

College can be and usually is a life changing experience. Why make it harder than it has to be? Sure it's good to step out of your comfort zone occasionally and find something in common with people you think you wouldn't have anything to share with. However, to do that properly most people would need a comfort zone to start with. Seems to me, Ibram's been an outsider for most of his life (many of us are). Why do you want to deny him a chance to find a "home"?

Thank you, manephelien.

No kidding. My jaw dropped when I saw the price tag. But I notice that most students there get financial aid, and the average is $10K, so maybe he can get some too.

Nah, that's what the Cellar is for. ;)

Besides, Ibram has already been exposed to much more than most kids his age. In real life and also here. He's been around the world. I assume his classmates in high school are mostly conservative military brats. He's in a conservative country. Has a conservative dad. Here on the Cellar, he's been exposed to a motley group of individuals with differing ideas. He's been forcefully challenged more than once.

After all the exposure to different ideas he's had so far in his life, and with his feelings of being an outsider, I think finding an insular home can be a good thing.

At a minimum, now he has a concrete idea of how different schools out there have different personalities. That's what he should be looking at.

The idea that a vast tract of land, comprising half of the entire nation, has a distinct, mandatory, political attitude, still hasn't been satisfactorily explained. It's been tip-toed around, and dealt with peripherally, but still, there it is, as the (faulty) basis for someone's whole argument.

Ibram, ultimately, you'll go where you feel comfortable. I have a sneaking suspicion that your constitution may well not be up to wintering in New England, since you've spent so much time in more temperate climes. Everybody being essentially the same as you, while initially comforting, gets really boring after a very short while. Nearly any campus (except say Grove City College or Liberty University) is going to give you a core of people that you'll end up hanging out with because of your similarities, but your differences are really what's important.

Funny story about Grove City ... my best liberal self-proclaimed extreme lefty friend went to college there.

Why? Not because they had the academic program he wanted.

Not because he wanted to go to a school with strong, conservative, Christian Values.

Not because he was an Atheist and wanted to shake up people with strong, conservative, Christian Values.

No, the reason he chose Grove City was ... at the time the school had the highest female to male student ratio in the entire country, and he knew that even with the emphasis on strong Christian Values he was going to get laid, and laid plentifully.

The plan worked.

He also ended up meeting his wife.

Who remains a Christian, while he is happily Atheist.

They have remained married for over thirty years.

Or claimed. It has been strawmanned quite a bit, though.

North, south, east, or west, hicks will be hicks.

Who are them? Where is there? What is being claimed here? If it looks like a duck, and quacks like a duck, why isn't it a duck? You tell me.

'Them' are conservatives, and there is the south, where there is both institutionalized (state) social conservatism and an undeniable conservative majority.

Look, Flint, drop it already. You arent going to make me want to go down south, nothing is, and all you are doing is pissing and moaning and whining over semantics. There is no reason, no reason for you to continue pitching a fucking fit, other than to make yourself feel better.
Drop it, dude. Lay off.

I don't care where you go. But it isn't semantics, it's sloppy thinking.

There are conservatives no matter where you go. You aren't obligated to hang out with them "down here" any more than you would be "up there" ...

http://www.paulgraham.com/colleges.html

Good read.

If you want to avoid this sort of thing in the future, I'll let you in on a secret. If you'd started out by saying, "I'm really interested in schools up in the New England area, I just love the people I've met there and the atmosphere really suits me," instead of "Screw the south it sucks," no one would have thought twice about it.

It's. Not. Sloppy. Thinking. No one claimed that the south was all conservative, just that it is more/mostly conservative. It votes conservative, it behaves conservative, and if it looks like a duck....

You're attacking where there's nothing to attack. If you're frustrated that by being in the south, you were 'labeled,' it's not really a big deal. Because everyone here knows that the south isn't ALL conservative. Hell, I live in Georgia and I'm probably one of the more liberal folks on these forums.

You're still missing the point, but I think repeating myself would be excessive.
Where you've gone wrong is in trying to read my mind, instead of simply reading what I've posted.

And is every second of your life spent in traumatized, repressed agony? Are you harassed by beligerent rednecks as soon as you step out the front door? No? Me neither. It must be some pretty sloppy thinking to assume that living in the South would be like that. What a difficult point.

Haha, well if that's your point than I agree. I have had some incidents, but it's no pervasive thing. Of course, I'm also white, straight, and have the military hair cut. Wonder what it would be like if I didn't.

Also, it should be pointed out that I have almost gotten a ticket for my truck for 'public indecency,' something that wouldn't have happened in, say, Iowa City.

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1316/...f524e344f4.jpg

http://farm2.static.flickr.com/1124/...67d4de2f26.jpg

Nice truck. It reminds me of how I used to go out wearing pajamas, leopard-print slippers, and a pink mohawk.

Memories...

/me hums those were the days.

Yes it is.

You edited out what wasn't claimed, but was strawmanned:
You're the one who added "mandatory", and you've been arguing as if someone else has made that claim. Try prevailing.

I've addressed that. If it isn't prevailing in my house, and it isn't prevailing among my circle of firends, and it isn't prevailing among the places I like to hang out, then it isn't prevailing in my life. I refer to the original claim: that there are so many conservatives in the South that it would actually be impossible for a liberal-thinking college student to live here. That is patently ridiculous. . . .The "mandatory" bit was a play on how ridiculous it is.

So I saw your "impossible" in italics up there, and out of curiosity, I did a search of this thread for that word. Your post (and now mine too I suppose) is the only one in which it appears.

Nobody said that.

Do you have a thesaurus?

Didn't they die out with the rest of the dinosaurs?

I'm pretty sure the mockingbird is a descendant of the thesaurus.

bump. Update please - whats up with the college search?

I'm very very partial to Bennington College in Vermont, at this point. Marlboro is still high on my list, but if I can get in (and, more importantly, if i can afford it), Bennington's top of my list. On the other hand, if I decide to opt for a bigger school, then Towson University in Maryland's looking like my favorite of the bigger ones. UMD's just too big, and if i don't go to school in new england, I wanna go somewhere in maryland.

Sounds like you have a plan.

UMD is pretty big. We've hired a lot of people who have come out of there, and they have all been pretty good. Of course, we don't hire the bad ones, so I'm not sure that really means much.

Having read this thread for the first time today, I was actually going to recommend Bennington. I have a good friend who goes there, and loves it enough that he spent several months trying to get me to transfer. It's challenged him and changed him in wonderful ways, and it sounds like he is having a really rounded experience.

I know you're pretty much decided, and on better criteria than just one issue, but I read this today and thought of you anyway.