A President's Welcome

To The Class of 2009

With Piano Row again under a perpetual cloud of cigarette smoke and the per capita population of tight jeans and iPods skyrocketing, it's time for an official welcome to Emerson College. For the new among you, we'll trot out the hoary old jokes one last time. That's hoary with an H, folks. Stop tittering.

EXT. CORNER OF BOYLSTON AND TREMONT - DAY

A taxi mows down a pedestrian. Duck Boats are pointing as they roar past. Five thousand cigarettes glow underneath that early 20th century Little Building facade. The one with the fake columns and the cornice. Dean of Students Ron Ludman, Ph.D., has just issued his annual plea to refrain from smoking during posted hours under the archway. It will be flatly ignored. This is partly because the high administration are widely considered armband-wearing fascists who would stand on the backs of orphans at Christmastime in spotless black leather jackboots if they could ensure there would be no outcry.

An EMERSON FILM MAJOR is sucking down a cigarette before class. The world is gray under sunglasses. He turns to another Emerson student, who's adjusting the skirt she's wearing over her jeans.

EMERSON FILM MAJOR: You know, I think Quentin Tarantino is totally more respected than Andrew Lloyd Webber.

THE END

So. To continue. Lest we be accused of unoriginality, we're going to take a deep breath, collect our stereotypes, and get all of this out of our system now. We're dumping this shit like an oil tanker off the Alaskan coast.

Remember, kids. Emerson is a fake college. Emerson math is 1+1=Jazz Hands. Emerson science? That Nutrition course the dancers have to take. Emerson language? Sign language. And above all, let's not forget TH123: Movement.

Emerson fraternity? It's co-ed. Our quad? Out on the Commons. Watch for the homeless heroin addicts. Give a quarter to the Weatherman and find out how the Sox did.

We salute the bisexual chainsmoking chick with the dyed red hair and the tongue stud we met at that one party up in a Newbury St. apartment with roof access. We salute the LA acting major in the Seth Cohen blazer namedropping the producers he's smarmed his way into shaking hands with. We salute the gay musical theatre boy making out with the girl in the corner. We salute the pale film major in the emo glasses sweating in front of a blue computer screen in Ansin and the writers who are putting on thrift store suits and skinny ties and the set designers who are the only people in the entire dorm to have a set of screwdrivers and the theatre studies boys who are secretly rock gods and the broadcast journalism majors who, bless their hearts, have enough makeup on to be television-ready always.

We salute the Swiss Harvard student inbound on the T who, in conversation with two other Harvard students said - and I quote - "I actually have never dropped my pants at MIT. I may or may not have dropped them at Harvard."

But it's a quarter salute, because honestly, they're fucking Harvard students, and they don't need to feel any more goddamn important than they already feel.

Above all, we salute you the incoming freshmen, the most academically advanced class ever to grace the strip of tarmac and car exhaust and discarded Dunkin Donuts bags that is our campus. One of you, rumor has it, scored a perfect on the fucking Math section of the SATs. And that's great. But put the smiles away. The old-timers are already suspicious of this sort of counting prowess. Don't make it worse by bragging.

And so welcome, Class of 2009, to Emerson College. Do you have a light?