Aug 23 2006
The Class of 2010
Each August since 1998, as faculty prepare for the academic year, Beloit College in Wisconsin has released the Beloit College Mindset List. A creation of Beloit’s Keefer Professor of the Humanities Tom McBride and Public Affairs Director Ron Nief, it looks at the cultural touchstones that have shaped the lives of today’s first-year students.
Members of the class of 2010, entering college this fall, were mostly born in 1988. For them: Billy Carter, Lucille Ball, Gilda Radner, Billy Martin, Andy Gibb, and Secretariat have always been dead. For these students:
- The Soviet Union has never existed and therefore is about as scary as the student union.
- They have known only two presidents.
- For most of their lives, major U.S. airlines have been bankrupt.
- Manuel Noriega has always been in jail in the U.S.
- They have grown up getting lost in “big boxes.”
- There has always been only one Germany.
- They have never heard anyone actually “ring it up” on a cash register.
- They are wireless, yet always connected.
- A stained blue dress is as famous to their generation as a third-rate burglary was to their parents’.
- Thanks to pervasive headphones in the back seat, parents have always been able to speak freely in the front.
- A coffee has always taken longer to make than a milkshake.
- Smoking has never been permitted on U.S. airlines.
- Faux fur has always been a necessary element of style.
- The Moral Majority has never needed an organization.
- They have never had to distinguish between the St. Louis Cardinals baseball and football teams.
- DNA fingerprinting has always been admissible evidence in court.
- They grew up pushing their own miniature shopping carts in the supermarket.
- They grew up with and have outgrown faxing as a means of communication.
- “Google” has always been a verb.
- Text messaging is their email.
