Yes, as those readers who pay attention are already aware -- yes, I went to college with Doug Faneuil, the government's "star witness" in the case against Martha Stewart. One of my close friends even hooked up with the guy. And this week, the poor kid is getting grilled on the stand about his drug use (a little ecstacy, some pot, and a bit of Special K) and some saucy email jokes involving goats that he sent via company email while he worked at Merrill Lynch.
I'm starting to realize that one of the chief benefits of a Vassar education is that I can network with people like Doug Faneuil, Ethan Zohn (who won 'Survivor: Africa' in what had to be Vassar's hottest wet dream), and various members of the "Hollywood elite." But, then again, I spent most of my time at Vassar working on the school newspaper with people like Jon Swerdloff, Gabe Anderson, Anastasia Signoretta and Amanda Spielman.
Here's a photo of The Misc's newspaper staff back in 1995 when I was Editor-In-Chief. (I'm the one in the back row flailing a Blow-pop.)
My other major interest at Vassar was attending Michael Joyce's Hypertext rhetoric and poetics classes with people like Kate and Mike.)
Jon Swerdloff apparently continues to have quite a bit of interaction with fellow Vassar alums to this very day. For example, this guy named Marlen wrote some warm, fuzzy things about Swerdloff in a recent journal post that also describes how all the kids at Vassar are mean to each other.
I can explain Vassar students' social interation in a bit more detail for you, patient reader, complete with a "user scenario," if you will. Here's how it worked on the Vassar campus: basically Boy/Girl A pretends not to be acquainted with Boy/Girl B even though each one knows intimate details of each other's sex lives including names of each person Boy/Girl B is sleeping with and even which positions Boy/Girl B likes best. Boy/Girl A and Boy/Girl B may have even hooked up with each other or smoked pot or opium together, but when they see each other in the campus cafe or bar they cast their eyes down or feign a look of boredom/confusion/indifference. And it's pretty much ridiculous because it's a SMALL liberal arts college. One of the primary reasons one attends a small liberal arts college is to "get to know" people, right? Yes, I think I read that in U.S. News & World Report.
Seriously, the main reason I've never lived in New York City is because it's wall-to-wall Vassar kids. Don't get me wrong, I absolutely love a bunch of the people I went to school with -- like Mindy, Joanna, and Helen who live here in San Francisco and were in attendance at my 30th birthday party (hell, I even still love J.P. though I don't see him very often at this point), but overall I still stand by my initial assessment that most of the people I went to school with act like wankers and pretentious fucks. I moved to California so I could meet people with some sense of humor about themselves and those around them, people who unapologetically use "hella" as an adjective in conversations and go to Burning Man every year. And yes, some of the people in San Francisco are pretentious fucks too. But not quite as many, I swear. At least not the people I'm friends with. I wouldn't stomach it.
You might notice that I haven't written many posts about Vassar on my website over the past 8 years. I guess my silence is mostly due to the fact that it feels weird or wrong to write anything critical or negative about a fancy school that I attended on full scholarships and financial aid. I know I'm lucky that I had the opportunity to go to Vassar alongside all sorts of rich kids and that my education certainly opened all sorts of doors for me. Yes, I should count myself as lucky and just shut the fuck up. But, yeah I also know I'm lucky (and happy) that I have distanced myself from Poughkeepsie, both geographically and emotionally. Oh, yes some things about being 30 are quite nice.
posted by Jess at 5:21 PM
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