[I don't remember this story being posted to the board. --info]

Slate, 12/30/05

http://www.slate.com/id/2133433

Those Weird College Ads
by Mike DeBonis

...The standard mise-en-scène of the institutional spot will be familiar to any dedicated college-sports watcher: campus greenery, one-on-one pedagogy, chemistry labs, black gowns and mortarboards, and laughing/hugging students of as many colors as possible. Those are just the ingredients, though. A survey of more than 30 of this year's bowl ads reveals many different tactics for selling higher education....

Play to adolescent self-centeredness: At Penn State, "It's Your Time!" As a series of placards held up by a diverse cast puts it, it's also "Your Love," "Your Choice," "Your Friends," and "Your Future." (Even if it is Dad's money.) Oregon prefers to ask the big questions: "Why do you work so hard? What message are you sending the world? What legacy do you want to leave?" The University of Southern Mississippi, though, wins the Ayn Rand Memorial Self-Actualization Award. What do a pensive painter, a guy in a library, and a woman at a computer have in common? "The courage to think for themselves and a university that fosters it. Southern Miss: Freeing the power of the individual."...

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Follow-up by Margaret Soltan, University Diaries, 1/1/06

http://margaretsoltan.phenominet.com/2006/01/telly-ud-faithful-readers-know-doesnt.html

...Slate titles its piece “Those Weird College Ads,” but they’re not weird. They’re all pretty much the same merry music montage, in which scandal-ridden places like the University of Georgia and the University of Colorado pretend to be scandal-free, and places like Penn State tout their lack of intellectual challenge (“Everything‘s gonna be alright!” goes the pop refrain.).

Having followed President Shelby Thames’s despotic rule over the University of Southern Mississippi (Thames has finally been kicked out of office as of next year), UD was amused to read (there’s no link to the ad itself) this description of USM’s ad:

The University of Southern Mississippi … wins the Ayn Rand Memorial Self-Actualization Award. What do a pensive painter, a guy in a library, and a woman at a computer have in common? "The courage to think for themselves and a university that fosters it. Southern Miss: Freeing the power of the individual."

And they say irony’s dead.

Posted at: 1/01/2006 08:16:00 AM