My Brief, Brief Career in Ivy League Admissions

As a full-ride scholarship student at Penn in ’69  —  through no fault of my own…I was a faculty kid  — the University nonetheless told me I might consider showing my appreciation by volunteering in the Admissions Office talking up the University of Pennsylvania and its august history…

           (“Founded By Benjamin Franklin”!)

…fielding basic questions from then touring nervous parents of hopeful, rosy-pimply cheeked high school seniors, while those worthies themselves were interrogated in innermost rooms in chairs designed large enough to make any 1600-SAT-er feel small, grilled like marinated baby ducks over spits

      My first day was my last.

     An assistant admissions dean brought me from an inner area cubicle to an outer office with dark wood walls and dark wood bookshelves three miles high and predominantly red and blue–Penn colors!–ancient Chinese carpets over a dark wood floor. She had told me to be prepared for every kind of curricular, extra-curricular, and sports question, every kind of question imaginable.

     Hell, I thought, I’d slept up in the loft of Max Yasgur’s Woodstock barn not two months before: I knew damned well everything.

     A moment on, a thin father and a thinner mother with fidgety fingers and a painfully thinner-still boy were brought in. (I was his elder by one full year!) I stood slowly, shook their hands, offered them seats. After a moment, Painfully-Thinner left with the assistant dean for his spit-grilling. I smiled at Mr. and Mrs. Thin. They smiled back. We sat. An ashy aura hung about them. Mr. Thin said, “Penn’s our first-choice school for Charles. What can you tell us about the…?”

     Mrs. Thin interjected smartly, “Oh, dear, we can read about all that in the materials! What I want to know is…” and here her face darkened and her fingers nearly knotted themselves, “…what I want to know is, young man, Is There…A Marijuana Problem on…this Campus?”    

     I considered my options as an Aquarian-Age enlightened eighteen-year-old two months into college life, as a smart person and smart-ass living away from home  —  a full forty minutes!  —  for the first time in my life. I searched her nervous eyes and took in her shaking hands.

     For the smart-ass that I was, there was really no choice.

     “Ma’am,” I said reassuringly, “On this campus there’s no Marijuana Problem at all. You can get as much as you like.”

     The following morning I was volunteered for the balance of the term to a computer science lab to wrestle valiantly with punch-cards.