AUDREY REED
News Editor
Freshmen, welcome to Pepperdine. Let me introduce myself. My name is Audrey Reed, and I’m your friendly news editor. I’m a senior. I graduated from high school in 2002 and some of my favorite bands are Wilco, My Morning Jacket and Cake.
But I’m being redundant here. You may already know that thanks to my favorite Internet site and yours — Facebook.
With Facebook, a freshman’s first day of school isn’t today: it’s the day they register with the site and fill in the fields summing up themselves into neat categories.
Kids these days (and by kids, I mean freshmen) have it a lot different than when upperclassmen arrived at Pepperdine. Instead of joining a Greek group or a student organization, they can join a Facebook group like “I miss Tex-mex!” or my favorite “Pepper-fine ‘09.”
Instead of getting ready for a night out on the town, they just make sure their Facebook photo is of model quality.
The anticipation of seeing if that NSO fling is in your humanities class lasts only as long as it takes to post a class schedule online.
When new students feel like they are alone in this new place, they can look and be affirmed that they are popular. They really have 178 friends at Pepperdine and 303 across the United States.
For better or for worse, this is the first school year Facebook will be at Pepperdine from the start.
Let’s reminisce upon the old days when the first day of school really did matter: when people would deliberate for hours about what outfit they would wear, what lunch table they would sit at or if they would be the student who brought books to class on the first day.
Going back to a simpler time, I was looking through some old pictures of my first day of school photos circa second grade. I had a backpack bearing my school’s mascot and a neon pink outfit with geometric shapes on the front it.
I was hot stuff. I didn’t need designer jeans or a minuscule cell phone. All I needed was a cool lunch and light-up tennis shoes.
But one thing hasn’t changed — grade school or college, Facebook or no Facebook — and that’s the idea that with a new school year comes a clean slate.
Forget about the time you dropped your tray in the Caf on the water polo players or when you asked your religion professor about Abraham parting the Red Sea in front of your lecture class.
Think of the first day as the day of school the student body awakes from a four-month coma leaving them with amnesia. (Obviously, I’ve watched too many soap operas this summer.)
Today, I ask the student body not only to forgive and forget previous school year mishaps, but also to take Facebook with a grain of salt.
Just because someone doesn’t have 200 friends before they have set foot on campus does not mean they are inferior. It just means they don’t base friendships on digital pictures or reality TV fame.
08-29-2005