MBB: Midwest Conference

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

Once Discovery lost rights to the Eco-Challenge, there was really no reason to watch them anymore.

[John Gleich]

Mythbusters is entertaining, even if it ISN'T great science...  I mean, I disagree, scientifically, with their outcome half the time, but...

[gobucs]

Was just reading about the top 10 party schools and Bucky has fallen to #4.  Texas, Penn St., W. Virginia are all ahead.  On an interesting note, in the top 10 "stone cold sober" schools.  Wheaton leads the pack, with College of the Ozarks, Grove City College, PA. and the US Navel Academy following. 

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

Yes, but they're still #1 in the "Lots of Beer" category.

[The Roop]

You'd think one of the many Mormon schools in Utah would be leading the "stone cold sober" list.

[Gregory Sager]

Was just reading about the top 10 party schools and Bucky has fallen to #4.  Texas, Penn St., W. Virginia are all ahead.  On an interesting note, in the top 10 "stone cold sober" schools.  Wheaton leads the pack, with College of the Ozarks, Grove City College, PA. and the US Navel Academy following. 

Pfft. Wheaton is Animal House compared to Liberty, which is in turn Party Central compared to Bob Jones University. And, believe it or not, there are places with even harsher rules than Bob Jones U. Pensacola Christian College is so paranoid about social interaction between the sexes that they have pink and blue sidewalks and a mandatory six-inches-of-separation-at-all-times rule as far as men and women are concerned.

It's possible to drink on the sly at Wheaton, and I've known a number of Wheaties over the years who have done exactly that on more than one occasion. If you drink on the sly at the fundamentalist schools, you not only get ratted out by your peers -- who are, indeed, expected by the rules to report you or else face punishment themselves -- you get put to death by slow torture. Or something like that.

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

you get put to death by slow torture. Or something like that.

I believe the word your looking for here is "stoning."

[scottie]

/quote]


I believe the word your looking for here is "stoning."

Um, I think that's Evergreen State.

[coocooforcoekohawk]

/quote]


I believe the word your looking for here is "stoning."

Um, I think that's Evergreen State.

Evergroove State?  What about Humbolt State?

[matblake]

Pensacola Christian College is so paranoid about social interaction between the sexes that they have pink and blue sidewalks and a mandatory six-inches-of-separation-at-all-times rule as far as men and women are concerned.

I found a reference to dating on their website, curious that they have the word dates in quotes.  http://www.pcci.edu/CampusLife/SocialLife/SocialEvents.html

[Ryan Scott (Hoops Fan)]

Dude, they have their own minature golf course?  That's the one thing that may have tempted me to overlook the color-coded sidewalks.  I'm glad I didn't read that before making my choice for college.

[scottie]

Pensacola Christian College is so paranoid about social interaction between the sexes that they have pink and blue sidewalks and a mandatory six-inches-of-separation-at-all-times rule as far as men and women are concerned.

I found a reference to dating on their website, curious that they have the word dates in quotes.  http://www.pcci.edu/CampusLife/SocialLife/SocialEvents.html

And I think that handsome couple pictured in the chow line is exactly 6.125" apart from one another....

[diehardfan]

hahahahahaha...

I love it when we're at the top of ratings like that...

unfortunately (because it demonstrates a lack of integrity in the students who do it, only because we sign a statement promising not to do it), wheaton is not 100% sober... but I wouldn't be surprised if we were near the top either.

[The Roop]

The NRO Grapevine tells me that certain parties at Beloit wish to make it an alcohol free campus for athletes. In principle I might agree but in reality it isn't a good idea. A certain percentage of students are going to drink no matter what the rules say. So if you ban it on campus they will merely go off campus, that will likely involve driving back to campus afterwards; so I can't support such thinking.

[Gregory Sager]

And I think that handsome couple pictured in the chow line is exactly 6.125" apart from one another....

One of my brother-in-law's bevy of sisters went to Pensacola Christian College, and I asked him if the faculty and staff at PCC carry rolls of measuring tape that they can whip out at a moment's notice if a male student and a female student appear to be violating the six-inch rule. He didn't know, since he was so outraged that his sister submitted to having PCC impose such a rigid lifestyle upon her that he refused to visit her there, even for her graduation. But I love the idea of professors reaching into their pockets at the first sign of excessive fraternization and lunging at students with measuring devices.

unfortunately (because it demonstrates a lack of integrity in the students who do it, only because we sign a statement promising not to do it), wheaton is not 100% sober... but I wouldn't be surprised if we were near the top either.

Integrity is a pretty advanced concept for a lot of eighteen-year-olds. Rebellion, however, is something that people understand from the first moment as a toddler that they say "No!" to a parent. Make a rule, any rule, for young people and you invite rebellion. The only solution is to create a system of rules so draconian, like PCC's, that it pretty much excludes by self-selection any prospective student who has even a shred of difficulty with submitting to authority, or to the rules imposed by that authority. And then you back it up with immediate and unconditional expulsion to those very rare students who defy those rules.

As I said, Wheaton is extremely laissez-faire when compared to fundamentalist schools like Liberty, Bob Jones, and PCC. You don't get sent packing at the first hint of trouble at Wheaton, and your peers aren't forced into becoming informants. It also doesn't cater as much to the more rigid and sectarian flavors of evangelical Christianity the way that the fundie schools do, so there are people who show up at Wheaton having been raised in an atmosphere where alcohol is not considered a total evil to be avoided at all costs to the peril of one's soul. And thus there are people who drink on the sly at Wheaton -- although how much of it goes on is open to debate.

North Park is even further up the foodchain of permissiveness in terms of evangelical schools than is Wheaton. Like Wheaton, NPU is a dry campus -- but you don't need to sign a pledge (or a "Community Covenant", which is what I think Wheaton calls it now) that you will remain a teetotaler for as long as you're enrolled there. So even more drinking goes on at NPU than at Wheaton ... but you can and will get busted and then punished if you drink on campus (or are found intoxicated on campus, even if you got overserved somewhere else), and NPU is nobody's idea of a party school. That honor, in CCIW terms, seems to belong to Augustana; most of the people I know who are familiar with our eight schools generally agree that it's as close to a party school as our conference gets, although (perhaps paradoxically) it still has a good academic reputation in spite of that.

The pledge was one of the reasons why I chose North Park over Wheaton when I was a senior in high school and was considering both schools. Not because I wanted an easier path to drinking -- I could count the number of beers I'd had prior to college on one hand, with fingers left over, and I didn't fancy the idea of becoming yet another one of the millions of collegiate binge drinkers -- but because I valued my freedom and my status as an adult, and I perceived signing a pledge to mean that I would be surrendering that freedom and adult status. I guess that it was a matter of integrity for me, too ... although I did enough stupid stuff as a collegian to dispel any misconception that I was mature for my age.  But I would never tell a Wheatie that he or she made the wrong decision, because my decision was based upon my own personal convictions rather than what I consider to be general Christian principles.

Nobody's system is better than anyone else's. There's a spectrum of rules (and non-rules) for social behavior in American colleges and universities because there's no such thing as a one-size-fits-all environment. As Sly and the Family Stone put it, different strokes for different folks.