They lie on the lawn, happily reading in the sun or clustered in the shade of a live oak. They say hi and wave cheerily. They crack jokes as they wait in the food line for a shot of jambalaya. They smile at each other a lot. They are Stanford freshmen.
I came to appreciate all this good cheer last year when, as a senior, I returned to my freshman dorm to serve as a resident assistant. I was reminded what makes freshman year so unique: that openness to others, that willingness to step into a stranger’s room and start a friendship.
The frosh in my dorm were true to form. They seized all the opportunities presented in their first year, and it was no ordinary year. The Class of 2001 was the first official class of the millennium and the first to have a First Daughter and all the accompanying hoopla.
For the RAs, as well as for the frosh, the overall feeling was of excitement, newness tinted like mint. As the year rolled along, we RAs watched as frosh struggled with Lear and physics. We empathized as they mulled over CIV’s “Why Read It.” We advised them on summer jobs, weekend road-trips and the Draw. Most of the residents were kind and sweet. They gave us encouraging notes, surprised us with birthday parties and even cooked us special meals.
However, the year wasn’t all frisbees and philosophy. It also coincided with Proposition 227, Ron Unz’s English-only ballot measure to kill public bilingual education in California. This sparked a vicious e-mail war over our chat list. Now, I’d never quite bought into Res Ed’s fantasy of a utopian world where everyone loves one another. But the heated e-mail exchanges still surprised me. Supporters of bilingual education stated facts and asked for understanding; opponents replied with racist one-liners.
The tone of the messages became threatening. Students with foreign-sounding names were ridiculed and told to shut up or leave the country, as a small number tried to silence those with opposing views.
If you look at group photos of everyone in the dorm together, you see a lot of people standing and sitting shoulder to shoulder, knee against knee, smile on top of smile.
But I know another, darker side the photos don’t show. There was vomit left in bathrooms, trash piled up in the hallways, animosity between next door neighbors and even among roommates. Freshman year may be an idyllic time, but this desert island was often closer to Lord of the Flies than The Blue Lagoon.
The final wake-up call came at the end of the year. In that last week of school, the dorm was vandalized. Broken beer bottles were left in a trail along the stairs. Furniture was destroyed. Despite the Prop. 227-inspired e-mail war and other incidents earlier in the year, the end felt like the wrong final reel in a movie we’d mostly all enjoyed.
This dispiriting conclusion made an interesting juxtaposition with all the Commencement activities just about to begin. Commencement is a culmination of four years of constantly trumpeted student successes and achievements. And yet, here was this particular small crowd of frosh showing they weren’t just happy-go-lucky overachievers. For them, it was the inevitable climax of a year of excesses and foul manners.
We can be racist, selfish and destructive, they seemed to be saying. I understand the PR need for Stanford to put smiling, friendly faces on its brochures, but the emphasis on our “goodness” can blind us to some realities. Being an RA can open your eyes to them.
On my last day, I came back to my room to find a folded note under my door and a message on my white board. In the note, one of the girls on my floor said she’d miss me and thanked me for being “the best RA that I will ever have.” The message on the board, more succinct, read “Suck My -- .” It was a fitting close to a remarkable year.
Samuel Park, ’98, is a writer living in Los Angeles.
