The Beloit College Mindset List for the Class of 2014
Most students entering college for the first time this fall—the Class
of 2014—were born in 1992.
For these students, Benny Hill, Sam Kinison, Sam Walton, Bert Parks
and Tony Perkins have always been dead.
1. Few in the class know how to write in cursive.
2. Email is just too slow, and they seldom if ever use snail mail.
3. “Go West, Young College Grad” has always implied “and don’t stop
until you get to Asia…and learn Chinese along the way.”
4. Al Gore has always been animated.
5. Los Angelenos have always been trying to get along.
6. Buffy has always been meeting her obligations to hunt down Lothos
and the other blood-suckers at Hemery High.
7. “Caramel macchiato” and “venti half-caf vanilla latte” have
always been street corner lingo.
8. With increasing numbers of ramps, Braille signs, and handicapped
parking spaces, the world has always been trying harder to accommodate
people with disabilities.
9. Had it remained operational, the villainous computer HAL could be
their college classmate this fall, but they have a better chance of
running into Miley Cyrus’s folks on Parents’ Weekend.
10. Entering college this fall in a country where a quarter of young
people under 18 have at least one immigrant parent, they aren't afraid
of immigration...unless it involves "real" aliens from another planet.
11. John McEnroe has never played professional tennis.
12. Clint Eastwood is better known as a sensitive director than as
Dirty Harry.
13. Parents and teachers feared that Beavis and Butt-head might be
the voice of a lost generation.
14. Doctor Kevorkian has never been licensed to practice medicine.
15. Colorful lapel ribbons have always been worn to indicate support
for a cause.
16. Korean cars have always been a staple on American highways.
17. Trading Chocolate the Moose for Patti the Platypus helped build
their Beanie Baby collection.
18. Fergie is a pop singer, not a princess.
19. They never twisted the coiled handset wire aimlessly around
their wrists while chatting on the phone.
20. DNA fingerprinting and maps of the human genome have always
existed.
21. Woody Allen, whose heart has wanted what it wanted, has always
been with Soon-Yi Previn.
22. Cross-burning has always been deemed protected speech.
23. Leasing has always allowed the folks to upgrade their tastes in
cars.
24. “Cop Killer” by rapper Ice-T has never been available on a
recording.
25. Leno and Letterman have always been trading insults on opposing
networks.
26. Unless they found one in their grandparents’ closet, they have
never seen a carousel of Kodachrome slides.
27. Computers have never lacked a CD-ROM disk drive.
28. They’ve never recognized that pointing to their wrists was a
request for the time of day.
29. Reggie Jackson has always been enshrined in Cooperstown.
30. “Viewer Discretion” has always been an available warning on TV
shows.
31. The first home computer they probably touched was an Apple II or
Mac II; they are now in a museum.
32. Czechoslovakia has never existed.
33. Second-hand smoke has always been an official carcinogen.
34. “Assisted Living” has always been replacing nursing homes, while
Hospice has always offered an alternative to the hospital.
35. Once they got through security, going to the airport has always
resembled going to the mall.
36. Adhesive strips have always been available in varying skin
tones.
37. Whatever their parents may have thought about the year they were
born, Queen Elizabeth declared it an “Annus Horribilis.”
38. Bud Selig has always been the Commissioner of Major League
Baseball.
39. Pizza jockeys from Domino’s have never killed themselves to get
your pizza there in under 30 minutes.
40. There have always been HIV positive athletes in the Olympics.
41. American companies have always done business in Vietnam.
42. Potato has always ended in an “e” in New Jersey per vice
presidential edict.
43. Russians and Americans have always been living together in
space.
44. The dominance of television news by the three networks passed
while they were still in their cribs.
45. They have always had a chance to do community service with local
and federal programs to earn money for college.
46. Nirvana is on the classic oldies station.
47. Children have always been trying to divorce their parents.
48. Someone has always gotten married in space.
49. While they were babbling in strollers, there was already a
female Poet Laureate of the United States.
50. Toothpaste tubes have always stood up on their caps.
51. Food has always been irradiated.
52. There have always been women priests in the Anglican Church.
53. J.R. Ewing has always been dead and gone. Hasn’t he?
54. The historic bridge at Mostar in Bosnia has always been a copy.
55. Rock bands have always played at presidential inaugural parties.
56. They may have assumed that parents’ complaints about Black
Monday had to do with punk rockers from L.A., not Wall Street.
57. A purple dinosaur has always supplanted Barney Google and Barney
Fife.
58. Beethoven has always been a good name for a dog.
59. By the time their folks might have noticed Coca Cola’s new Tab
Clear, it was gone.
60. Walmart has never sold handguns over the counter in the lower
48.
61. Presidential appointees have always been required to be more
precise about paying their nannies’ withholding tax, or else.
62. Having hundreds of cable channels but nothing to watch has
always been routine.
63. Their parents’ favorite TV sitcoms have always been showing up
as movies.
64. The U.S, Canada, and Mexico have always agreed to trade freely.
65. They first met Michelangelo when he was just a computer virus.
66. Galileo is forgiven and welcome back into the Roman Catholic
Church.
67. Ruth Bader Ginsburg has always sat on the Supreme Court.
68. They have never worried about a Russian missile strike on the
U.S.
69. It seems the Post Office has always been going broke.
70. The artist formerly known as Snoop Doggy Dogg has always been
rapping.
71. The nation has never approved of the job Congress is doing.