Strange Interlude

This is probably off topic for the blog but I can do whatever I want. Anyway I don't know why I suddenly thought of this but it is a good reminder of how weird people are and maybe somebody has a comment.

My first year in college -- what we called my freshman year back in the day -- during orientation I found myself standing next to a guy at one of the tedious events they subjected us to. We were leaning against the railings around the track in the field house. So I tried to start a conversation with him. He seemed very aloof and unfriendly and didn't seem to want to strike up an acquaintance so that was that. He also seemed somewhat older than 18 -- he even had a bald spot.

I never talked with him again, but I did hear about him. The story came mostly through the grapevine but it's sparse enough and straightforward enough, and was going around consistently enough that I'm sure it's true. He told everybody he'd been in the army, but he didn't like to talk about it, which was plausible. The Vietnam war was still going on and four or five years previously he certainly could have been drafted. But people who were in his classes  got the impression that he must have had a lot of time to read in between marching and killing people. He would raise his hand and talk about stuff that was four weeks ahead in the syllabus or not on it at all. He already knew calculus so why was he taking it?

 

About halfway through the semester, maybe in late October, the deans somehow found out that he had not been in the army at all. In fact he had been in Cambridge, Massachusetts, attending Harvard University, from which he had graduated. He had somehow created a fraudulent application to Swarthmore and gotten himself admitted as a freshman. When they asked him why he had done this he said he was writing a book about it. Of course they immediately barred him from campus (and maybe sued him?) so I never got to ask him.

 

Much about this is puzzling. Anyone who could have plausibly provided a letter of recommendation would presumably have known that he was attending Harvard, and not in the army. High schools keep track of their alumni college admissions. A white guy going to Harvard who must have had plenty of money would probably have gone to prep school or at least public school in a leafy suburb and they would know. It's also hard to believe the admissions office didn't want to see his discharge letter and maybe more of his service record. Forging all that would be quite an undertaking. I suppose he could have gotten his high school transcript sent without any questions asked but it would have been a risk.

Then there's the financial aid application. As a veteran, he would have been entitled to educational benefits and that would have to be part of his submission. It's barely possible that by policy, they didn't have the same people look at both the admissions and financial aid application and he could have gotten away with that. 

 

But this was a very expensive stunt. Since he couldn't have actually gotten any sort of scholarship, even if he could get Swarthmore to reduce his tuition he still would have had to pay a lot, plus room and board, and of course he was foregoing the opportunity to work. Maybe at 21 he'd come into his trust fund.

 

And the book idea is obviously ridiculous. There are millions of college freshman every year, and he had already been one. If anybody would be interested in a book about that experience there could already be thousands of them. Going back and doing it again means that every single character in your book would be a victim of your deception and betrayal. What would be the point?

Of course everybody has the fantasy of going back and doing major life events again, knowing what we know now. We are too soon old and too late smart, and youth is wasted on the young. But come on man.