Like many of my fellow warriors (ha), I like to sit out in the Pecan Grove on a sunny spring afternoon and leer philosophically at prospective students as if I were judging their moral and intellectual caliber and not just ogling their midriffs and subtle Feria highlights.  Each group seems to be comprised of basically the same demographic elements: several rejects from the Jailbait Modeling School®, their man-bitch counterparts, and a stoner.

            I was leisurely engaged in this endeavor just last weekend.  From afar, I sighted a prospective pack edging closer; they appeared to be more civilly dressed than usual, and I could not discern which one of them was the token pothead.  As the cadre approached, I could find no innocently borne midriffs, no tight jeans, no "come hither, you sexy freaky hairy man" looks.  And then—jowls.

            Oh, the horror!  Jowls upon jowls, flapping in the wind like Pygmy breasts, like a bloodhound's lips.  My partner in crime uttered to me, "Those prospectives look old…"

            "You idiot!" I cried, realizing just moments before he the implications of the coming invasion.  Alumni Weekend '02.

*            *            *            *            *

            Last weekend was Alumni Weekend '02, when Hendrix alums from all over Conway make the trek down Harkrider to justify to themselves the annual check they write so that the Murphy folks might bring to campus the most thoroughly depressing Australian writers they can find.  The school's schedule of events for the returning hordes looked really quite appetizing—I'm more jealous than I care to admit.

            From eight to nine in the AM, there was to be a "Sports Breakfast."  Rumor had it that the last surviving member of a Hendrix football team was to be in attendance.  At ten o'clock, there was another breakfast, this time a "Continental" breakfast, and sometime that afternoon all the copies of the Profile were picked up in order to protect the alums from the dangerous opinions that current Hendrix students might hold.  I'm not sure if this last event was actually listed on the schedule, or if it was more of a spontaneous act of fascism.

            I don't know the whole story, just what I've read in the Senate notes and a few other pieces of miscellaneous information.  The papers were put out in the morning.  By the afternoon, they were all gone.  All of them.  Now, I know the Profile is a fine publication, one of the last bastions of journalistic integrity in the world today, but even the hottest issues tend to stay on the rack for a few days, at least through the weekend.  Speculation is that the issues of the paper were picked up because of Alumni Weekend, that perhaps there were ideas and words contained within the paper that respectable alums would surely not wish to see.

            I will now show, using logic, that this is dumb.  Please note that this is only valid if these papers were picked up under order of the administration.  If not, I'm just squawking up the wrong deer stand. 

Here's my logic: Alums are graduates of Hendrix College.  Graduates receive a degree.  This degree is a statement of approval—the person who gets this degree has been validated by the college as having passed their classes, not having been kicked out, being able to think for themselves, and so forth.  If one then takes up the papers out of fear that they might offend or disgruntle the alumni, what is that saying about the type of person that graduates from Hendrix?  Is the class of '52 so highly sensitive that they can't be allowed to read their own college's newspaper?

Who is it that we are so afraid of offending?  Was it the two alums that offered me a beer in the Couch/Martin circle at Alumni Weekend '01?  Beer beer beer beer beer, there, I said it five times.  Hopefully this won't offend those people who prefer nonalcoholic beverages.  Better take the paper away from them, though, just to be sure.  Enough about that.  Like I said, I don't know what happened, but it's a little suspect.

Perusing the rest of the scheduled events, it seemed to me that Alumni Weekend may be no more than an attempt to make all the current students jealous of what the alums are eating.  Crudité?  When was the last time we were served something with an accent mark in its name?  Po' Boy sandwiches do not count. 

It's true, I am jealous—while all the fogeys were lounging about in their Bermuda shorts, eating crudité and sipping Cabernet Sauvignon '34 from crystal chalices while reliving the glory of their WIT finals, I was studying the different sects of Jainism, trying to think up clever ways to differentiate between Svetambaras and Digambaras.  Let it be known, then, that when I make my own sojourn down Harkrider, pants hitched up to my neck, paper-thin skin fluttering against the wind, and take a seat in the Pecan Grove, I will rub it in their bright and beautiful faces: Yeah kid, I passed my WIT final—thirty years ago.  Go cry to your mommy.  What am I eating?  It's called Sx-Y'YG3'4, and no, you can't have any.

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