College Code

Nothing can ever be simple.  That main sidewalk across campus can't just be a sidewalk, it has to be the "hello walk" because "you can't walk down it without saying hello to everyone you know!!!!!".  Ugh.  That's so cheesy that I just want to get some crackers and leave a little trail of crumbs behind me until someone stops me to ask me why I am dropping Ritz on the ground and then I can laugh at them.  Or something.

Anyway, college kids talk in code.  Become familiar with this code - it will save your life.

- The dining hall.  Do not call it the cafeteria or the dining hall.  You must call it by the name of the company that caters it.  I don't know why, but everyone does.  It's "Saga", or "Bon" (short for "Bon Appetite"), or whatever company your school uses.
- The buildings.  Drop the "hall" or "center" or "building" from their name and just call them by whoever they were named after.  "Weyerhouser", "Scotford", "Hendrick".  And make sure that you are pronouncing the name right because "Cowles" sounds like "Coals", not "Cow-ls".
- The classes. Shorten the name to the smallest possible number of syllables, even if some of the classes then sound very similar.  Chemistry 101 is "Chem 1", Probability and Statistics is "Stats", etc.  You should all be used to this by now. (But careful not to drop in any AP references - your history class is not APUSH and cannot be called that because you will get blank stares)
- Professors.  They are Profs.  Many people will call them by their first names, or by nicknames.  To practice this, call Flanhofer "Carla" and then pretend that she didn't smack you.

Then there are the terms that are specific to each college.  Whitworth has many.

- The Pine Tree Curtain.  The barrier between campus and the rest of the world.  There are countless hundred-year-old trees on campus and none in the city.
- Core.  The three big seminar classes that everyone has to take.  They are actually called "Christina Perspectives on Western Civilization".  No one knows why we call them core.
- BJ.  The freshman dorm.  Its real name is Balwin-Jenkins but everyone calls it BJ and no one ever mentions the obvious sexual connotations.
- Bucs.  We are actually the Pirates, but we also go by Bucs but NOT Buccaneers.  I don't know why.
- Back 40.  The 40 acres of land behind campus that we own but can't build on because it is too steeply sloped.  The catalogues like to make this piece of land sound like it has been purposefully preserved for the sake of nature.  It has not.
- The Hub.  The building in the center of campus that houses Saga, the bookstore, the PO, the coffee shop, and student services.  I'm pretty sure that they named it the Hixon-Union Building on purpose so that they could cleverly shorten it and the pretend it was an accident.