One last bit of mayh3m: Why it doesn’t suck to BU
There comes a time in a person’s life when he hangs up his disaffected college student hat and decides to stop writing in his college blog about how fucked up his alma mater’s administration is. I thought that time for me was May of 2011. I had come off my most popular article ever, ironically about “BU Biddies,” I was in the midst of celebrating my graduation (let’s be honest, that started about January 2011, but hey, who’s counting?), and I was about to start a job at a major consulting firm. It was just about time to disassociate myself from a blog that could be perceived as fairly negative about my alma mater. That’s what I thought.
But, in the midst of a couple hundred spam comments waiting in the queue, I read one on April 11th that changed my mind.
“I personally love this blog. I am a current senior in high school and a potential SMG undergrad (still deciding between 3 schools) and all of your posts have really informed me about SMG beyond the sugar-coated websites and emails. There are good and bad aspects of any university and acknowledging them is by no means “whiny”. Thank you for writing what you’re writing. It really gave me a realistic view of the school and helped me through my decision making process. I actually have one question… You said that you love BU, but would you recommend it to a high school senior, despite the apparent flaws? Again, thank you for writing these posts; I have thoroughly enjoyed each one.” (emphasis added)
Wow.
Talk about a loaded question.
Normally, I’m not one for grandstanding, so I probably would have quietly accepted the comment and privately send an email to “ProspectiveSMGStudent” from St. Louis with my recommendation. Unfortunately, this isn’t exactly what you would call a “normal” time for BU.
My beloved alma mater has come under fire as of late for various reasons (full disclosure: here, here, here, here, and here) and in the past few months, it hasn’t exactly been easy to be a BU grad. I don’t think all of these incidents have necessarily been as viral as the greater BU community in Boston might think, but I can tell you right now that it wasn’t so hilarious when my coworkers were making BU hockey rape jokes on a trip we took a couple months back.
It is for that reason and for this article that I have decided to write one final post on the Mayh3m Blog. Here goes…
I had the absolute privilege and the honor of going to Boston University School of Management for my undergraduate education. It was an experience that I enjoyed overall, taking the good and bad into consideration. I think one of my friends said it best on Facebook last Thursday in light of the recent scandals: “I am actually flying to Boston this evening to spend this upcoming weekend with some of the best people I know. These are people who I would have probably never met without BU. I have too many amazing memories to count from my time at BU. It is messages and students like this that will always make me #proudtoBU.” This is a sentiment with which I agree wholeheartedly, but with that, I cannot issue a blanket recommendation to any random high school senior without a few caveats:
- Tuition. Seriously. I’m not messing around with this one. I was lucky enough to go to BU, and lucky enough to go to SMG, and lucky enough to secure myself a fantastic job, but I also inherited a massive, crushing amount of student debt. I will pay this off well before the 10-year deadlines, but it’s certainly not an ideal situation. If you aren’t getting significant scholarships/grants, your parents aren’t loaded, and you’re not going into an opportunist industry like I-Banking or Consulting*, this is something to consider. You really do not want to be a Philosophy major with 100k of student debt. Also, Boston is incredibly expensive. Think at least $800 – $1200 / month for off-campus rent that isn’t a hellhole, $10 pitchers of Rolling Rock on a Tuesday night being a “deal”, and cabs just being generally obscene.
- Traditional College Experience (Read: Campus, Sports Culture, etc.) Boston University, so named, is incidentally in Boston (sort of), unlike the little outhouse on the hill a few miles down the road. While it’s no NYU, with Macy’s in between college buildings, it’s definitely a city campus. There’s only sort of a “quad”, under the misnomer of the “BU Beach”. There is no football, only hockey. And, well… hockey is hockey – it’s definitely fun to go to the games, but it will never be as much of a community organizing draw as football tailgating at the Big Ten, SEC, or whatever other conference in D-I football that you can think of.
- *You’re on your own. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, but it’s something to be aware of when you sign up for a school. I’m sure a lot of places try to hold your hand and make it easy to a) deal with roommate problems, b) switch between colleges, or, for example, c) find a job. BU is not necessarily one of those places. BU is what you make of it. I liked that. Despite having an extraordinarily terrible roommate experience freshman year, I learned how to deal with the problem on my own. Despite wanting to get into consulting, but the university having a relatively poor track record of corporate recruiting from that industry, I figured it out. BU definitely encourages you to be a self-starter, but if you don’t seek things out, that’s your own damn fault.
That being said, I would be remiss if I ended on that note.
BU is a unique school where there are a lot of unique opportunities. It’s about finding your niche as lame or cliché as that sounds. If you want to do Greek life, god-willing (see what I did there with the lower-case “g”…?), go for it; if you want to South America and help people with medical issues over the summer, go for it; or if you want to be like me, and spend your time with Type-A Model UN nerds, you are certainly welcome to do that as well. (If you want to join the “People Watching Club” because you think it sounds cool and you heard about it on your tour at BU… well, you’re a clown, please do not come here. Also, please give me the name of your tour guide so I can extricate them from the greater Boston area.) Depending on what you spend your time doing at BU, it can open a lot of doors for you and you will very likely meet a lot of people who like to spend time doing those same activities.
I had a great education in the School of Management. I came to BU fearing my future in “business”, God forbid I end up like Peter Gibbons in Office Space. After about one semester, I developed a passion for this field in large part due to the classroom / team experiences and the top notch instruction from my professors. Not every concentration is created equal, but the core elements (including/especially junior year’s CORE semester) readily prepared me for an entry-level career in a challenging industry, where I sat beside coworkers at orientation from other business schools who had never before experienced such a high pressure team experience.
Boston is a great place to live with a multitude of opportunities for summer work. After sophomore year, you will actually want to stay and intern here, paying the exorbitant rent prices, instead of going home and working in Small Town, USA. Despite the existence/prevalence of the “BU Bubble,” it’s great to be able to venture outside it when possible, especially when you can punch that “21” ticket and see the city in an entirely new light (or dark, I should say). Not to mention, when the parents visit, your only options are not campus favorites Sunset Cantina and Nud Pob, but rather… Union Oyster House, Legal Sea Foods, Atlantic Fish Co., etc.
Through my experiences in the organizations I was involved with (BUIAA, Student Union) and from studying abroad in Dublin, I met a phenomenal group of individuals at Boston University, some of whom will be my lifelong friends. To say I valued my time at BU is an understatement. The experiences I had and the individuals I met opened up doors to me and made me the person I am today.
Would I recommend BU to a current senior in high school? To give a standard business school response “… well, that all depends.” I think I’ll let my words speak for themselves.
The Biddie: an Unwelcome Visitor
On any night Thursday through Saturday, swarms of Ugg boot-wearing, miniskirt-clad collegiate females can be seen making a ritual migration to various Allston bars (most notably the appropriately named “Tits”) in search for a temporary mate (see: Bros).
In the urban jungle of Boston University, a previously undiscovered creature has recently come to light. Here, I take an exclusive, never-before-seen close-up look at this creature, the biddie (Uggbootus blackoutus).
The direct origins of the biddie are unknown, but legend has it that overexposure to shitty television such as Jersey Shore (the “Snookie Syndrome”), liberal allowance with daddy’s credit card, and general lack of self respect all contribute to the biddie population explosion. Although commonly thought to be a direct relative of the sorostitute, this is unsubstantiated.
These individuals are generally characterized by a short, petite frame, often seen wearing spandex and miniskirts leaving little to the imagination. Biddies can also be seen wearing American Apparel attire (the more ridiculous and obscene, the better) and Ugg boots or heels.
A nocturnal animal, the biddie flocks to Allston “bro” bars, particularly Tavern in the Square (or “Tits”), White Horse, Wonderbar, and the infamous “J Tree” (Joshua Tree) on weekday and weekend nights. These creatures can often be seen communicating in an undecipherable language (drunken cackling), texting on their Blackberry phones, taking scandalous photographs for Facebook that would render them unemployable if leaked. The diet of this creature generally involves Smirnoff Ice, colorful and fruity cocktails, as well as shots of Southern Comfort and flavored vodka.
The biddie’s mating rituals are peculiar and defy normal social conventions. Rather than selecting a monogamous mate, these individuals can often be found in their natural habitats waiting to be courted by a bro several times per weekend. Bros may or may not utilize “peacock”-style features (bright colored shirts or hats, ridiculous and unfashionable attire) to stand out from their fellow bros. Biddies generally become more liberal with their mate selection as they become increasingly more intoxicated. A particular subgroup of biddies “Harvard Hoochies” are highly selective with their mates and almost exclusively select Harvard males belonging to elite social clubs (Final Clubs).
Other creatures that coexist in the biddie habitat are quite varied. One creature, the “Comm Ave Runway Model”, is characterized by excessively designer-dressed girls who strut (literally) up and down Commonwealth. Another, the aforementioned bro, a man, possibly belong to a fraternity, who wear rugby shirts/baseball caps and drink to the point of blacking out while getting their prowl on at bars and parties. Finally, the hipster, the tight jeans-wearing prophets who were here to save us mere mortals from the culturally-sheltered mainstream, while being snarky and drinking a PBR or two along the way.
The biddie has existed within the BU biosphere for quite some time, but the taxonomical original seems to be from two sources. The first being the (unofficial) Boston University Department of Snow and Weather twitter account @BUSnowAlert which referred to the particular habits of biddies, e.g. “If you can walk to an Allston party in the snow wearing high heels and a miniskirt, then you sure as hell can make it to class today. #BU” The second source is the infamous “Harvard Hoochies”, self-described BU biddies that “husband hunt at Harvard Final Clubs… [and] ward off RUHGs (random ugly Harvard girls)”.
This influx of the biddie population has had devastating impacts on the BU community, not unlike the zebra mussel invasion of the Great Lakes. Do not be fooled by the @HarvardHoochies’ (Uggbootus blackoutus Harvardian) witty banter on Twitter. Based on the ability to form sentences and utilize complex literary techniques such as satire, it seems that this subgroup has evolved beyond the extreme level of stupidity common among their fellow jungle peer group and actually contributes to society.
The demonstrable stupidity of the Uggbootus blackoutus is easily demonstrated by reading a short passage from the about section of the “Rants of Pour Girls” blog:
Rants of Pour Girls is a tastefully unrefined Blog currently composed by three 21+ females living in Boston and the Greater Boston area. MyBarNameisLola, ItsLyddieBitch, and CallMeWeezyFsBaby are dedicated to bringing you all the gory details about shit that pisses us off… Inspired by the plethora of grammatically incorrect Tucker-Maxish garbage blogs out there written by guys, we felt the world was in need of some estrogen-driven ranting and pouring. And damnit, we were right…
This typifies the average biddie intelligence:
- Run-on sentences used in a passage insulting someone’s grammar
- Ignoring the fact that the subject of criticism (one Tucker Max), is a Duke Law graduate, while these individuals attend a barely-top 50 undergraduate institution
- Many of the so-called rants on this blog provide a unique window into the depraved thoughts of the biddie, especially one entitled ““The Get MTV Off of DJ Pauly D’s D Rant.”
- Though it may be tempting (particularly for the bro strata) to exploit this newfound creature for its sexual proclivities, it is highly ill-advised as there is a high chance of brain damage. It is the hope of this columnist that the BU community will rise up and halt the spread of the biddie population. Though inconvenient, the truth is that left unchecked, the limited resources of this community (esp. straight males) cannot support the continued growth of this population.
*Special thanks to the BU Quad and Harvard Hoochies for inspiring this piece.
Sucks to BU: We’re dancing this month, no thanks to BU administration.
I just returned from one of the most exciting experiences of my entire four years at Boston University: the Men’s Basketball America East Championship. The Boston University just beat Stony Brook 56-54 to secure a spot in the NCAA Men’s Division I Basketball championship. Let me say that again: Boston University is in the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championships. For those of you who don’t go to my fine University, let me put this in perspective:
Never have I ever… looked at BU as a basketball school.
Spirit fingers before John Holland’s free throw to win the game with 2.4 seconds left on the clock.
The Class of 2011 has had quite a few notable sporting events in their time. We rioted in Kenmore when the Red Sox won in 2008. We won the NCAA Hockey Championship in 2009, for the first time since 1995. And now, the 2011 America East Championship, to secure a bid in the March Madness tournament.
Un-fucking-believable.
BU’s fans getting ready to rush the court after the 2.4s Stony Brook attempt at scoring.
Though, this win is not without a slightly heavy heart. I stood at the game alongside some my friends and peers, yet I did not feel my administration was standing with me.
Time and time again, it seems as if the Boston University administration completely disregards the student body in their decision-making process. In fact, it was once summed up to me as “the students at this university succeed in spite of what the administration does.”
I agree.
Stony Brook University showed up in full force with about 11 buses filled with 600+ students, including the full marching band, dance team, cheer squad, and two sections worth of belligerent students.
Stony Brook’s student section, complete with marching band, dance team, cheerleading, and two full sections of the Agganis Arena stands.
Boston University showed up with our pep band, dance team (wow, where were you in the last three years of my life?), cheer squad, and an anemic student section behind one of the hoops.
BU’s student section. Looks kinda empty, hm?
BU’s chant “Where is Stony Brook?” said it best: where the hell is this school?
Okay, by my count, this school is nearly 200 miles away and they have to take a ferry to get to BU. Spring break aside, how do you mess this up, BU administration? How in the hell did our student section not dominate damn near the entirety of Agganis Arena?
Concession #1: it’s BU’s spring break. Many of my friends left on Thursday, Friday, or earlier today for flights to places with much better weather. Understandable.
Concession #2: BU has rarely, if ever had a legitimate basketball team before. I had never been to a basketball game before today. Call me a bandwagoner, I embrace the term. GO BU!
That said, there were numerous things that the BU administration could have done to help facilitate better student involvement at the game.
1. Make tickets available and accessible. Stony Brook GAVE AWAY (you hear that BU? yes, for free) tickets to the game. The only thing students had to pay for was transportation to the game. BU basketball ticket sales were not only confusing and unpublicized, but obnoxious. If you had a sports pass, it was free. If you did not, it was $10. If you wanted to get a ticket, you had to go all the way to Agganis (not centrally located) to pick one up.
Normally, this would not be a problem, but this was one of the most important basketball games in the last decade and it fell during our spring break. I, of all people, understand the business side of things, but BU/Agganis should have put aside its revenue-generating motto in light of the basketball team’s success and given away free tickets in the GSU during the past week. Considering the amount of sports pass tickets that were not used due to spring break, this barely would have cost BU a thing.
2. Keep dorms open to allow student attendance at the game. Once again, spring break is happening this week. One of the side effects of that is that the Boston University dorms (Warren, Towers, 1019 Comm. Ave, HoJo, Myles, Danielsen, etc.) close at 12PM on Saturday (today) until after break. Despite our team being the favorite to win a conference championship, no one thought that maybe we should leave the dorms open for 4-5 hours to allow students to actually go to the games.
Putting aside all of the people that had already booked plane, bus, and train tickets – this would have at least helped convince New England/New York “locals” whose parents were driving in to pick them up.
3. Tell RSIG to chill out: it’s a basketball game, not a national security concern. The blatant nepotism of using RSIG (one of the board members is allegedly related to one of the co-founders) aside, RSIG consistently ruins the experience of BU student fans, and this game was no exception. Despite seats being open in our anemic student section (which was broadcast on national television via ESPN2, by the way), RSIG personnel were limiting BU fans entrance into the student section. Unless you had a special ticket, you weren’t getting into the “fan” section.
To close this article, let me just say that I am incredibly happy that our basketball team has been successful, but I wonder, if I had not been browsing random articles about the hockey team, would I even have known that BU was one game away from March Madness? Once again Boston University administration has missed the boat on an amazing opportunity. We hired a fantastic coach from Villanova, a team consistently in the March Madness tournament but yet the school fails to engage the students in a critical game.
Even the ESPN 2 announcers pointed out how much bigger the Stony Brook University section was compared to Boston University’s.
I applaud John Holland and the Boston University Men’s Basketball team in making it to the March Madness tournament and I wish you luck against the #1 seed. As for the BU administration, once again, you have proven that it sucks to BU.
Pat Chambers cuts one of the loops off the net, sharing the experience with the rest of the team. BU Admin, take a lesson: sharing is caring.