I visited a friend in Gorham last year and returned to the Cafeteria at the Brooks Student Center for the first time since since my freshman year, when I lived in Anderson Hall. After I collected my food, I found my friends seated on the left side of the cafeteria.
“So you guys eat over here, huh?” I asked.
“Yeah, we eat where the actual thinking, enlightened people eat,” one of the people at the table said.
This brought me back to my days at Anderson, when my friends usually sat on the right side of the cafeteria and one of my flannel-wearing mates remarked of the opposing faction: “Look at those art fags. I wouldn’t be caught dead eating over there.”
It stands to reason, I guess, that any gathering of people as large and diverse as that found in Gorham will find itself divided by interest, by background, by lifestyle. And it may not be clear to the reader at this point which side of the cafeteria I prefer to sit on; It may not be clear where I stand on the Gorham cafeteria issue. My feeling on the issue is this: I think the fact that such a topic even exists at all for me to write about is as rediculous as any Saturday Night Live sketch, and as depressing as any Dashboard Confessional album. Actually, It’s as depressing and rediculous as any Dashboard Confessional fan.
I digress.
You may think I’m bring overly critical of my fellow students. You might say, “people don’t have to hang out with other people who they don’t like!” And that’s true, but when I came to USM, I had an idea – probably a na?ve one – that as budding young adults, and as people with a clean slate, we college students would encounter one another with a little more candor, that we would rub shoulders a little easier, that we would hang out with a broader range of people than we had in High School. I got the impression from movies and television that college would be teeming with people of all descriptions making friends with each other and getting into wacky adventures. Instead, I found people splintered into cliques, who huddled, munching their food moodily, complaining about it, eyeing people at other tables, and complaining about them, and basically talking a whole bunch of shit. In fact, I remember it being even easier to approach new people in high school than it is here at USM.
It seems to me that the schizm at the Gorham cafeteria is a symptom of attitudes that prevail throughout the university. We don’t seem to be a campus with a lot of cohesion, or even much good will or interest in strangers. There could be any number of reasons for this. I’ve always thought the unviersity could use more public lounges, not neccissarily for studying, but just for socializing. Maybe it’s because we have such a large commuter population. Maybe people from New England are just kind of uptight and sour-faced in general. I don’t know.
This seems all be changing, and I hope it is, albeit slowly, from what I’ve seen from the Free Press booth at the Husky Fest, and from what I hear around campus. As time goes on, people seem more interested in what they see at these events. I’ve heard people whisper to each other with hope in their eyes that students are more interested in joining and creating new student groups lately. One possible antidote to a bored and disdainful student body is to get people into some kind of group besides a classroom so that they’ll talk about something other than how bad the Aramark food is, or what a bitch so-and-so was when she said this-or-that. And etcetera. I think it’s a crime to resign yourself to a life of boredom and nit-picking. I’ve always injected a little extra class and flaire into whatever it is I do. For instance, check out the new comic, Achewood on page 9. That was my idea. Suckers.
There’s a lot to do on campus, though it may not seem that way if you don’t look.
For instance, I’ve been ordered to plug the Free Press in this column. We’re on the lookout for writers and especially for photographers who want to help every week. Seeing as how there’s no photography degree here, I think joining the Free Press would be a great way to get some training in that area. Our Photo Editor, Joe Lops, is a great guy who knows a lot about every area of photography and is quite willing to teach anyone who is interested. Also, I hear that he is single. If you’re interested in writing, even if you’re not confident with your current skills, the Free Press is again the place to go. All your writing gets spruced up by me, the News Editor, before it’s printed, and I know a thing or two about the English language. I, also, am single. At any rate, the Free Press is a great way to build a portfolio no matter what it is that you do.
Besides the Free Press, there are groups of all descriptions, from the Computer User’s Group to the Outing Club, from the GLBTQA Resource office to the Young Republicans. It’s all out there waiting for you, and all you have to do is quit talking shit and go do it.