On Monday morning, the father of a prospective student asked me the question every parent asks: What’s the one thing you wish you’d known as a freshman? My first instinct, for some reason, was to lie.

I rambled for a few minutes about making good friends and taking advantage of all the great opportunities at Syracuse University. But that’s nonsense – I didn’t need to know it when I was 17, and I don’t really care about it now. So I stopped myself, took a deep breath and told that kid’s dad the truth: College is a total sham.

So why do we sugarcoat it; why do we lie? Why do we make up stories about kissing benches and Quads in spring when we should really tell everyone the truth about school?

There are a lot of great people here, from students to teachers to local hooligans, and the social experience is fun. But you can pass human sexuality by skipping all but three classes, and more people have been ticketed in bar raids than have seen the chancellor in person.

So I’m going to take action, not waste my time complaining or filling high school seniors with false hope. I’ll need a job in a few months, and I know the one for me: President and Chancellor of SU.

Not qualified, you say, with my 3.064 GPA and soon-to-be bachelor’s degree? What I’ll teach students is that those aren’t the important parts of college or the useful parts of life. It’s my overflowing buddy list and 115 Facebook friends that matter. It’s the time I stayed up 33 hours and still didn’t hand in the paper that was due in the morning, and the six consecutive nights I found my roommate on a futon drinking beer and watching chick flicks.

(By the way, I’ll have that futon in my office. Don’t sit on it.)

And if you’re skeptical of my skills, check the crime-scene photographs of my old Sadler suite, and ask me how I barely survived a year of disciplinary probation (some of the other guys didn’t make it). When I put that on my resume, which, by the way, the Board of Trustees will receive tomorrow, it will prove that I can identify with students – and drink a large number of them under the table.

That, and I haven’t been in an academic building since Thursday. It’s the way that college should be – reduce the hoax that is higher education to reading a few good books, and focus on teaching us the important things about life. If we’re going to waste money, it should be on 25 cent wings, not multi-million-dollar metaphorical corridors.

So let’s get the ball rolling, because there are only a few months until I’m unemployed. And if you’re still not sure – not that students have a say in the university’s affairs – think of the beer pong tournament at my inaugural ball. High school seniors drink for free.

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ROB HOWARD IS THE EDITOR IN CHIEF OF THE DAILY ORANGE, WHERE HIS FABRICATED NONSENSE APPEARS REGULARLY. E-MAIL HIM AT ROHO@DAILYORANGE.COM.

Published on April 19, 2005 at 12:00 pm