The Roosevelt Institution
Our Tragic Flaw
The Bubble is a natural flaw in our university system that must be conquered at every turn. On Day Three of NSO, we freshly-minted bubbleheads, already disengaged from the natural flow of human existence by 72 hours of palm trees and dorm cheers, got our first “Bursting the Bubble” talk, as inevitable as “the Birds and the Bees” discussion in junior high. Trapped inside of our snow globe campus, we lose sight of the outside world. How can you play intramural dodgeball when Chinese citizens still face party censorship? How can you sip Orange Dream Machine when people still wake up in Guantanamo Bay? How can you speak of Kierkegaard when North Korea just tested nuclear weapons? We are not living real life here at Stanford; across the freeway, beyond the IKEA and the Best Buy, that’s real life. For over two years now, my freshman dorm has been waging email war over how to spend the $600 left in our dorm fund: One camp insists we throw a party with booze and bouncy castles, the other pushes for donations to charity. For shame, bouncy castles.
The Playground
The Bubble is the only world that should matter to us. Maybe someday you can feed the poor and solve the Middle East, but right now we’re still just kids. The problems will still be there in four years, and if you think The Review or The Roosevelt Institution are changing the world, you, Sir or Madame, need to get laid. You can still cure cancer when you’re 23, but by that age, you can no longer wake up in time for lunch, leave for class unshowered wearing your pajamas and flip-flops or flirt with the cute guy or girl in your IHUM section. Check Google News, watch “The Daily Show” or read “The Economist” if you must, but don’t bother me with your supposed outside world. I’ve got more important things on my mind.
Look, But Don’t Touch
The Bubble is so shiny. Go work out in our new gym. Watch football in our new stadium. Watch them build the new Old Union, the new Law School dorm and the new underground parking lot. Jamba Juice wasn’t here a few years ago. Neither was Subway. The bookstore just got a spit shine. So did the Treehouse. Don’t you like all those plasma screens? Doesn’t Hoover Tower look freakishly clean? It is the beautiful cycle of reconstruction. Your dorm will look very different in a few years. They recarpeted Larkin a few weeks after my class moved out. There is no sadness here, no nostalgia, because the important places in your life are only memories. It reminds me a bit of the Getty Museum in Los Angeles — sparkly as a 30th century utopia, hollow as a plaster cast.
Role-Playing Game
The Bubble is an open-ended gaming universe following the “Sandbox” model epitomized by “Grand Theft Auto.” Within the boundaries, you can do anything you want: run naked through the Quad, smoke weed on the Theta Chi rooftop, throw empty beer bottles off the balcony, sleep with ugly people with low self esteem and beautiful people with low self esteem. Sure, the cops get on your tail every now and then, but you can usually lose them, or, if need be, launch a rocket launcher. In “Vice City,” if you flew too far away from the island, the graphics got all woozy. It feels the same when you leave campus — palm trees and bike lanes give way to hills, a golf course, endless roads and endless traffic down Palm Drive. The world gets fuzzy, and then you’re back in reality.
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