SUperfreak

I was recently perusing Syracuse University's timeline of key events in the school's history. Don't worry, I was doing this for research for an article; not to satiate my overwhelming thirst for all things orange. Here are a few gems:

1874
A need for spittoons in the Hall of Languages is announced by The University Herald, forerunner to the Daily Orange.

1898
The student handbook warns freshmen "not to conclude that the University can't get along without you. It certainly can."

(zing!)

1906
One hundred spectators are injured and one is killed when bleachers collapse during a Syracuse-Colgate football game at New Star Park, the team's temporary home.

(the first of several tragedies that SU fondly remembers in its timeline)

1910
The Daily Orange holds a three-day editorial campaign to promote campus friendliness.

(Has it improved yet?)

1918
Twelve students die, emergency hospitals are erected in dormitories, and the campus is quarantined for more than two-and-a-half October weeks because of a Spanish Flu epidemic.

(if I had been here 90 years earlier, perhaps I could have been an emegency nurse in one of the clinics, thereby fulfilling my sick desire to be a civil war nurse in the south, Gone With the Wind style.)

1921
Dancing is banned for the final two weeks of the spring semester by Chancellor Day, who says, "We are close upon examinations and have no time to dance."

1930
A Daily Orange story declares college is a waste of time for women: "For an average girl who intends to make marriage her chief business, to waste four precious years that ought to be devoted to romantic adventure seems tragic."

1947
The Goon Squad is created to enforce the wearing of freshmen beanies, which are supposed to enable upperclassmen to easily spot freshmen and offer them help and guidance. Instead, beanies become a way to harass freshmen. Architecture students of the forties are particularly harsh on beanie-less freshmen-they're carried off to be dunked in a sink. Beanies become obsolete after the 1970 student strike.

1960
Use of the Alpha Tau Omega cannon, fired after SU touchdowns in Archbold Stadium since 1922, is indefinitely suspended after an accident injures five students during the Penn State game.

(seriously?)

1966
Men are required to wear socks in dining halls.

1985
More than 73 years after the Daily Orange first addressed the need for a student union, the Schine Student Center opens.

(always so timely in addressing students' needs)

Syracuse University... proud of its nearly 150 year of ridiculousness.

People Talking Without Speaking, People Hearing without Listening

What does it mean that so many of our interactions are digital? In my experience, I’ve had several friendships that existed almost exclusively in cyberspace. People that I knew from school, but barely saw or spoke to, would tell me painful, intimate details of their lives over Instant Messenger that never would have been revealed if we were talking face-to-face. In fact, we almost never mentioned the private things we spoke about online when we spoke in person. It’s hard to be honest and candid when another person is looking right back at you. The strange pseudo-anonymity that the Internet offers makes people feel brave and safe.

I am a person who loves the AIM conversation. I’ve always been uncomfortable on the phone. I express myself better when I write, and an AIM conversation allows me to think and correct myself before I say something stupid. The same goes for e-mail. I would much rather e-mail my parents or friends because I feel a pressure to deliver on the phone. My education as a journalist has certainly helped me get over that hurtle, and I no longer cringe at the thought of calling strangers on the phone. But it’s with the people I love most, my friends and family, that I find phone communication hardest. Does that speak at all to the fact that traditional face-to-face or even voice-to-voice communication is no longer the norm? There is a level of intimacy there that many of us may no longer be comfortable with.

But what are we missing? There is something to be said for a connection between human voices on the telephone. Most inflections and emotions in the voice can’t be conveyed online. The more we rely on e-mail, text messages and AIM conversations for social satiety, the further we get from legitimate, human connection.

We watch strangers on YouTube. We create profiles on Facebook and MySpace, and leave them there for people we barely know to gawk at. With these sites, we are essentially providing a quick memo about our personalities on the Web, telling people to look at pictures of us, read our interests, and see messages from friends on our walls. From this, they can gather a sense of who we are, without ever having to bother with actually getting to know us.

It’s a new type of voyeurism. We stare at each other, on Facebook, MySpace, YouTube, and everywhere else, watching one another's public creation of life on the Internet, and in many ways, this is our new replacement for human interaction.

This digital personality is especially strange when it’s all that’s left behind. Today, when our friends die, there are Facebook groups to memorialize them. We write messages on their walls that they will never read because that's what we did when they were alive. The silly web page that we created will last longer than us, and our friends will use it to digitally reach out when they can’t do it in real life anymore. There is this new public performance of grief that never existed in previous generations. People used to write these thoughts in journals or letters, but now they publish them publicly behind the semi-anonymous shroud of the Internet.

But this excessive digital living has gotten to the point that we don’t even notice it. We get invited to parties online, submit assignments, set up job interviews. Relationships begin when people ask us out via text message, and we might hear about someone’s death, graduation, or their wedding engagement online.

There’s a new apartment complex in New York City that is designed to allow people to watch its residents. The building’s glass walls provide open viewing for passersby on the street to see inside, and for the people inside to see the passersby on the street. They can watch you; you can watch them. The interior is also equipped with an open floor plan that allows a great deal of “peekaboo” opportunities within the building. The bathroom is a glass cube, for example.

This particular brand of voyeuristic exhibitionism seems shocking at first. But isn’t it to be expected? Maybe it’s because we are too busy yapping into our cell phones to make eye contact with people. Maybe it’s because our lives are so busy now. Everyone works more, and when we’re not working, television and the Internet have replaced community and leisure activities. Maybe a lot of people stopped wanting to make new friends; we don’t need them because we live digital lives with our cell phones and computers.

So we have resorted to living in glass houses. Because if we can't live our lives in the company of other people, at least we can watch them.

People, People who Need People

It's no secret that I am a top-tier people watcher. If people watching/creeping could be a profession, I would be the highest earner in my field. With a quick glance at a passerby, I can tell you their eye color, height, clothing, posture, and assess their general emotional disposition. I am also able to tell where women are in their ovulation cycle and estimate the rate of facial hair growth in most men.

You know you want to be me.

This last week of people watching though, it was particularly fruitful. On Monday, I saw a boy in a penguin costume go sprinting from the student center. This was two days before Halloween, so it's not out of the question that he was in costume. But the running? In a penguin costume? I can't even make these things up.

During my academic advising, I noticed a scale hidden against the wall in my adviser's office. Now, why would a person keep a scale in the office? How frequently are you weighing yourself, exactly? Do people know that you do this? What happens if you weigh more than last time? Do other people use this scale? Does the clock chime at a certain hour, and all of the public affairs department participates in a weigh-in? Do you have an eating disorder? Are you on weight watchers? Are you happy or unhappy? Is that scale electronic, or does it have the analog dial?

Do you realize how I suffer? ALL OF THESE QUESTIONS AND NO ANSWERS. I struggled to maintain my composure and answer her questions about what classes I plan to take next semester. How dare you ask me these things when all I want to do is step on the scale with you.

Lastly, while enjoying coffee on the steps of Hendricks, a cluster of Asian men, dressed in business suits gathered in front of the building and began rapidly taking pictures. *Insert politically incorrect joke here* My courses at college beat you over the head with the effects of rampant prejudices and the danger of believing in stereotypes. I am well aware of all of this, but was stricken by the hilarity of this moment. What else am I supposed to do when one of the most hackneyed stereotypes is playing out right in front of me?

But I do go to a school that serves fried chicken and collard greens at the annual Martin Luther King Jr. dinner, so I guess this sort of thing is to be expected.