Oh, hipsters...

(as seen in the joke issue of The Echo)

Admissions strives for diversity, recruits more hipsters

“What this school needs is more diversity,” Dean of Admissions and Financial Aid and Alternative Culture Expert Parker Beverage said. “There are too many polos, too many biology majors…and too few existential conversations.” To fix this problem, the College’s Admissions Department hopes to expand a group that is largely underrepresented on campus: hipsters.

According to urbandictionary.com, hipsters comprise “a subculture of men and women that value independent thinking, counter-culture, progressive politics, an appreciation of art and indie-rock, creativity and witty banter,” and the College feels that these qualities would greatly increase the intellectual level of the student body. Students that use words like capitalism, nihilism, romanticism and any other –ism in everyday conversation “will surely spark meaningful discussion and debate in class” Beverage said.

Furthermore, “the College’s academics must keep up with the changing times,” Beverage said, and in a world where Britney Spears is mundane and Lady Gaga is revolutionary, “hipsters reflect a new generation of thought.” Prestigious universities like Brown and Columbia already boast large skinny-jeans-wearing populations, “and it is about time that Colby joined their ranks” Beverage said.

Beverage happily noted the small but loyal contingent of students that smoke outside the Street in between classes and eat in Foss, even on weekends. “But we can do better than this,” he said. He is optimistic that the College will be able to attract more hipsters despite its non-urban setting. “We may be hours away from an Urban Outfitters,” he said, “but Ken-a-set is right down the street. And everyone knows that hipsters prefer authentic vintage clothing.”

Nevertheless, the College will take certain measures to make the Hill more appealing to hipsters. It plans to expand the chai tea collection in the dining halls, limit the music played in Pulver to obscure techno and add more courses like “Neo-Confucianism and Chinese Buddhism” to the curriculum.

To easier identify hipsters in the application process, the College has also added a new component to the supplemental application. “It now includes a checklist,” Beverage said, on which students denote whether or not they wear thick-rimmed glasses, are vegan, like Andy Warhol, worship Kerouac…etc.

Just because someone owns a pair of Ray-Bans does not he or she is a hipster, however. To avoid false identification, the last question on the checklist asks: are you a hipster? “This is where we will weed out all of the poseurs— because a true hipster would never answer yes,” Beverage explains.

The College’s interviewers have also been trained to pick out certain style, mannerisms and personality traits associated with hipsters. “When I am interviewing a prospective student,” Admissions Interviewer and Expert Hipster Identifier Cathy Latvis said, “first I note what they are wearing. Does it look like something a homeless man on the streets of Manhattan in the 1960’s might have worn? If so, then they are off to a good start,” she said.

“But not all people who dress like hipsters are actually alternative,” Latvis warned. “Which is why I pay attention to more subtle details. How often do they brush their side bangs out of their eyes? How many times do they refer to something as ‘ironic’? Sometimes I even casually slip in a quote from a Wes Anderson movie to see if they get the reference,” she said.

Those prospective students with the most number of yes’s (yet who don’t self-identify as hipsters) in the supplemental application checklist and display the most hipster qualities in interviews will be given priority in Admissions.

The College will implement these changes for the College’s Class of 2015, and it looks forward to the day when homemade sneakers outnumber Sperry’s on campus. “When I can walk down Frat Row and smell nothing but clove cigarettes,” Beverage said, “I’ll know we have accomplished our goal.”


Peace,
Rocky