Contemplating campus’ changes

The other day, as I passed by bustling buses picking up cellphone- and iPod-plugged pupils in front of the College, I realized just how much UF has changed. “When I roamed Weimer’s halls as an undergrad,” I thought, “did we have palm-fitting walkie-talkies with global reach, credit card-sized Walkmans with thousands of tunes, or free, reliable public transportation? I don’t think so.”

Until my epiphany, I viewed UF as the Austin Powers of universities – blissfully removed from the current nameless decade. The sights (red bricks), sounds (’80s pop), and smells (Hare Krishna lunch) have stayed surprisingly similar.

Suddenly, however, I see nothing but changes:

The student body. To me, it looks like Steve Spurrier in Gamecocks garb: the same, sure, but different. Our students are more academically astute, ambitious and accomplished. They’re savvier, wealthier, less politically passionate, more pop cultured and more conservative in their opinions, though not in their fashion and lifestyle. They’re also more diverse: I see more women and minorities and hear more accents and languages.

They’ve practically doubled in numbers since the 1980s, to nearly 50,000. But on non-football weekends, you wouldn’t know it – they clear out of town more often than we did, maybe because a higher percentage of them have cars.

They also pay closer attention to grades. Most of them received high marks in high school and treat the threat of a B or, God forbid, a C as a tornado bearing down on their academic real estate.

The College. It looks the same, and much of what made it great in the past is still here. But it’s greatly improved, in many ways. For instance, as the cover story shows, it has managed the tricky feat of boosting its professionally experienced faculty while growing its scholarship.

It’s been responding to the recent transformations in the fields for which it trains students. The Internet, TiVo and other technological and cultural developments have been pushing the buttons of advertising, journalism, public relations and telecommunication.

Gators. We never booed our players. Ever. No matter what. In my sophomore year (1986), probation kept our football team from capping a 6-5 season with a likely bowl loss. Nonetheless, we kept on cheering. In 1988, our team failed to score a point during our Homecoming game, caving 16-0 to Auburn, and still, we acted like motivational speakers. Today’s fans wear orange and boo: They spit fire and brimstone when we’re up 16-0 and they feel it should be more like 160-0.

On the other hand, today’s basketball fans are much more intense. Even before our team made its magical 2006 NCAA Tournament run to win its first National Championship, the students rooted passionately for Billy Ball.

It wasn’t always like that. When the Gators beat Boston College 74-66 in 1994 at the Miami Arena to advance for the first time to the Final Four, I jumped up and down in the stands – by myself. My friends and other Gators looked at me like I needed a jaw-dislocating slap. They clapped politely as if they just watched a Rachmaninov recital. But the Rowdy Reptiles, a recent Gators hoops
phenomenon, jump even when we fall behind by 16.

The campus. Today, students go to two country-club-like recreational centers that offer such exercise programs as Ab Attack and Gator Funk; two gourmet dining halls with weekend omelet stations, and numerous restaurants that serve everything from subs to smoothies to sushi; and a state-of-the-art cultural center.

We had no cultural center, no gyms, and only one on-campus dining hall – the Rathskeller. Its “food” made us nostalgic for our high school cafeterias and its décor encouraged us to keep our dorm-rooms condemnable. It burned down in a grease fire in 1987. U2 and R.E.M. did play there, but that was our only advantage. Otherwise, campus is far superior today. Students receive free newspapers (The New York Times, USA Today and The Gainesville Sun), free entertainment (Gator Nights) and free hoops tickets. Although they have proportionally about the same number of parking spaces, they do have the abovementioned busy buses.

I could go on about today’s students’ good fortune, but I might start sounding bitter. I’m happy for them. Now, if they could only turn off their iPods and cellphones long enough to appreciate it.