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OH NOES! TEH MILITARY!
Lotp to the white courtesy phone, please (er, if I remember correctly). This was an opinion piece in the Columbia Spectator, of Columbia University, but I'm sending you to the copy at the IvyGate blog, because somehow the article has become unavailable on the Spectator's site. Heavily edited for length and maximum buffoonery.I know why I chose Columbia: the campus is magnificent, the education is top-tier, and my peers are intelligent. I could look at a stranger, tell him or her that I went to Columbia, and hear the predictable, Wow, you must be smart. When my brother was getting ready to go to the Naval Academy, everyone ooohed and awed about how brave he was...one uncle who works on Wall Street said..."You will be set for life."...So in June, my family dropped him off in Annapolis. Soon that pride turned to anger and fear: after my mom dropped him off at Annapolis, she came home with an acute sense of grief. The only thing she could talk about was how to get him out...she was scared by the extent to which her son had suddenly become the property of the U.S. Navy. She begged me to call a naval lieutenant Monday morning to start the out-processing forms for my brother. When I looked at the course catalogue, which boasted seminars about leadership and selflessness, they were in fact seminars about weaponry and leading troops into combat. The reality of sending my brother to the Naval Academy began to set in: this was not a school; this was the military. OK, this is as much as I can stand. Short version -- rilly rilly smart Columbia student has a brother at Annapolis, which she realizes -- too late! -- is not an elite college after all, but part of the U.S. military! They must get him out! Complicating matters is all this pesky "oath" business, plus the fact that her brother doesn't want to leave. We are promised a four-part series. Posted by: Angie Schultz 2007-09-20 |
| http://www.rantburg.com/poparticle.php?ID=199584 |