Not The College Park I Knew

umcp11
Wed, 14 Apr 2010 18:58:48 +0000

“The dominant culture at our school is the big sports driven, house/frat party crowd.”

I don’t think this is true.

Government and Politics, English, History, engineering etc. are all hugely popular majors at Maryland. The people here are not dumb jocks, even though most of them do participate in dumb jock activities.

There was a time when MD was not a good school. That was 20 years ago. The place needs to evolve. Having a town that reflects an atmosphere of academia is going to cause positive feedback - it’s going to cause more intellectual people to apply, it’s going to provide outlets for those on the fence so that they don’t just follow their friends to a frat house every night, etc. Part of going to university is ACTIVELY cultivating an “I want to change the world” attitude, ACTIVELY recruiting that set of people.

I’m not going to say, well, that’s how it is and that’s how it will always be. If MD wants to make an effort to rise to the top, it can - other state universities have done it…Berkeley…UMich…UNC-Chapel Hill…we can be next, and the transformation of College Park will help.