Extending a hand

IU is red-hot, and this month we’re so hot we’re turning purple, thanks to the heat produced by The Wall Street Journal last week. The Journal published an article about the recent phenomenon that has New Yorkers flooding to IU. In the days following the article, thousands of readers nationwide began e-mailing it to all their friends and college-bound children, making it the newspaper’s most e-mailed story of the week.
The article’s popularity will inevitably result in even more East Coasters applying and being admitted this fall. Native Hoosiers might find themselves feeling less than hospitable to the wave of outsiders, making next year an inevitable culture clash.

Some Midwesterners use less-than-flattering adjectives to describe East Coasters. “Insular,” “snobby” and “egotistical” are just three of them, according to the article.
The way I see it, midwesterners should be glad to host New Yorkers for the duration of their college education. OK, so some people don’t like listening to their accents, and Saturday mornings at Village Deli are now overcrowded with demanding omelet-seekers from Manhattan. But it’s a small price to pay for the opportunity to have connections outside of the Midwest.

New York is a pretty happening place to say the least. It’s not a bad idea for students interested in migrating east after they graduate to network with their classmates who hail from that part of the country.

Aside from the networking benefits of befriending these imports from the Big Apple, there is also the element of entertainment and excitement that comes with spending a night on the town with a New Yorker. They’re fantastic company to keep because, coming from New York, where there’s always something to do, boredom is never an option. In fact, if we import enough New Yorkers, we could turn B-town into the new “city that never sleeps,” inciting events like celebrity spottings at Kilroy’s Sports Bar or Donald Trump building a plaza on Kirkwood. (Alright, alright, that could kill the endearing, small-town vibe, but it would definitely attract recruits for the Kelley School of Business.)

So you might see a confused group of freshmen clad in styles by Juicy or Ed Hardy trying to hail a cab on Walnut Street. Before laughing them off because they don’t know cabs in Bloomington are ordered by phone, put your networking skills to work. These days, traveling is inevitable and so is the collision of cultural differences. We might as well get it out of the way while we’re still young enough to have a mind that doesn’t need the application of oil before it can be opened.

The Statue of Liberty used to greet immigrants to New York as they made their way to Ellis Island. The statue of Herman B Wells located in the middle of campus was crafted so that his hand is offering a warm handshake to all students.
Both statues were designed to welcome newcomers, but statues can’t be the only ambassadors. Students also need to extend their hands and enjoy the benefits of this New York invasion.