The New York Observer has a hilarious story on the new urban chic clothing--Ivy League regalia--in "What’s that ‘H’ Stand For? Ivy League Teams Go Urban." The title of the story relates to this exchange:
When asked about the provenance of his Harvard jacket, Shakeil Brown, a St. Anthony High School student in Jersey City, responded: “I don’t know,” He helpfully pointed to the back: “It says ‘Crimson.’”
And since I can't pass on an opportunity to promote my alma mater, I will note the number 1 selling institution:
In fact, Harvard, Yale and Princeton are not the top sellers, Mr. Cuff said. While buyers in suburban markets like those clothes more, the urban market’s most popular school is, surprisingly, the one in New Hampshire.
“The No. 1 seller of 2006 would have been Dartmouth,” he said. “And Cornell was very, very popular.” In the 2007 video for rapper Mims’ recent song “This Is Why I’m Hot,” a young man is completely accessorized in Cornell University gear.
Although we can't boast too much, as we can't claim too much credit for being the colors of choice: "Harold Soto, 18, who works the register there and owns a Dartmouth track jacket and matching hat, said that the combo nicely matches his green-and-white Air Jordan shoes. When asked about the school name, he said, “It’s like a university, right?" [TZ notes: No, its a COLLEGE!]
As for the rapidly-gaining Cornell:
A worker at a hip-hop clothing store named Morlee’s in Jersey City showed me a fitted Cornell hat ($25, plus tax) and chuckled that the kids thought it was for the Cincinnati Reds (which it does resemble). I asked him what the hat did represent. “Some college team,” he said. “Clemson, I think.”
Harvard's sales suffer, it seems, because the Bloods have adopted Harvard's garb because of the colors (there's a phrase I never thought I'd be writing).
But don't go looking for this stuff in your local bookstore--“We don’t sell our product to the bookstores,” Mr. Cuff said. “Our price points are much higher than what you’d find at bookstores.”
I am most disheartened as what could have been a great opportunity to introduce this demographic to these schools has been transformed into nothing more than a shallow marketing gimmick.
The mental picture is kinda hilarious, if only for the irony.
Whoa! That is must be pretty high, then.
/sorry, newborn makes brain not good brain function
//need sleep
Meanwhile, I'll point out a distinction between American English and British English. To an American, Dartmouth is a school somewhere around the New Hampshire Vermont border, just an arbitrary place name.
To a Brit, it's the naval college at the mouth of the dart river.
Good point--I hadn't thought of the comment "like" that!
The Great Society
Must Hire--Can't Fire
Emmet Till
Section IX
Progressive Taxation
Gerrymandering
Affirmative Action
Democrats: No Guns
Republicans: No Abortions
Hillary Clinton
Barack Obama
John McCain
Break Dancers
Rap Singers
Boom-Boom-Boom from the car next to you
Mex gov't publishing comics on avoiding La Migra
Iran
Iraq
France
Homeland Security
Musselmen--not Arnold
Longshoremen--$125K p.a.
NYC Janitors--$135K p.a.
Postal Workers--$90K p.a.
Ward Churchill tenure
Larry Summers
Condo Rice--back to Forest Moon of Endor
Bill Clinton back in Wh. House
Jiminy Carter saving the world
Bono w/o his glasses
John Newcomb w/o his mustache
But I digress...
The idea of inner-city youth wearing garments of institutions that were historically restricted to at least students with half of a brain started my stream of thought wool-gathering.
Any persons of goodwill would certainly not be offended.
I remember seeing a documentary on the famous Georgetown-Villanova national championship. And I recall them saying that at the time Georgetown was what would be called nowadays the "hip hop" team and that their clothes were very fashionable as sort of an outlaw look.
But I would've never thought that my Dartmouth gear would have "street cred"!
http://www.mchawking.com/multimedia.php?page_function=mp3z
to listen for yourself
If you want to attack the intellectual failures of the genre I suggest listening to Entropy.
I'm puzzled by “The No. 1 seller of 2006 would have been Dartmouth,” (emph added). Well, was it or wasn't it? And if not, why not?
Dartmouth satisfies just about any reasonable definition of a university. It has full undergraduate programs in the arts and sciences and engineering, along with Ph.D. programs in those areas. It also has degree-granting graduate schools of medicine and business. (There may be more for all I know.) It is thus a college plus a graduate school plus at least three professional schools. When one combines a college with these other components one gets a university.
Boston College also satisfies any reasonable definition of university, and I have seen at least a couple of BC press releases referring to it as such. The name "Boston University" is already taken; otherwise BC might have renamed itself BU long ago. The idea that a college isn't a university merely because it chose not to change its name is silly.
As I understand it, the reason Dartmouth doesn't call itself a university stems from a long-ago attempt by New Hampshire to take it over and give it that name. If I'm right, Dartmouth is in the same position as BC -- it simply chose not to change its name when it became a university de facto.
Rockefeller University in NYC is at the opposite extreme. It has no undergrads at all, and its grad students (just a few hundred at most) are all pursuing Ph.D.s in the life sciences or closely related fields. At most universities, these programs would be but a portion of a single graduate school. Surely Rockefeller is less a university than Dartmouth.
If either Prof. Zywicki or Bill Woods believes there is some qualification for university status which Dartmouth lacks (and better yet, one which Rockefeller has), I'd like to know what it is. As a Dartmouth trustee, Pof. Zywicki should be better able to explain the distinction than just about anyone else.
Wow, it all comes together in a nice little euphemism. :P
Actually, it's more about the undergraduate focus (within an institution that does maintain three professional schools). Attributing the use of "College" to the effects of the Dartmouth College Case implies that the school uses that term merely for reasons of tradition, without substance.
Of course, a focus on undergrads does not turn a university into a college. (I realize you did not claim it does.)