Traditions can enhance the 'U,' but they do not define it

Erin Marsh Thinking of 'U'

One afternoon last week, about 30 cute junior high kids came into the Daily to look around and ask some questions.

"Is working here fun? What do you do? Where do you make the papers? Where's the bathroom? How come you like Michigan?" I could answer all their questions - except that last one.

It's the same question I've tried to answer for a lot of people: first-year students, friends visiting from other schools, some misguided family members who decided to attend Michigan State, and kids who just want to figure out what they're doing after they leave high school.

My 16-year-old sister, for example, visited me two weekends ago and just wanted to see some "good college stuff." Fortunately, she was here for the post-Penn State bash on South University and at President Bollinger's house (I have a feeling that story went over pretty well in her high school halls on Monday morning). She definitely saw some "good college stuff." And there's no way I could have explained that occasion to her if she hadn't lived it herself.

I counseled some incoming first-year students when I worked as an orientation leader a few summers ago. Without fail, all those students wanted some answers. They came here full of questions: "How easy is it to drink underage? Is there a curfew? What if I hate my roommate?"

But the real questions lay somewhere beneath the cheesy nametags - and those were the ones that they wanted most badly for me to answer: "Did I make the right decision by enrolling at Michigan? What if I don't meet anyone? What if I get lost - really lost - in the middle of all these people?" And then the most important one of all: "Can you tell me why I'll like it here?"

I would like nothing more than to adequately express to everyone who asks me why I love it here, and why they probably would, too. But I can't.

What I could tell them is all the stuff that's printed in the Student Life Handbook or the literature that comes with admissions applications. And don't get me wrong - it's all terrific stuff. Despite the differences that mark us as a student body, everybody knows a tradition. Every Michigan hockey fan knows what to say when a player from the opposing team lands in the penalty box. No one wonders what's going on when, on a chilly night in April, hundreds of people run through Ann Arbor in the buff. People here are loathe to step on the 'M.' Everyone pumps their fists when they hear "The Victors."

Traditions are the rock of cultures, religions and people. They are ageless and timeless. They bridge our lives and allow us to forge bonds that might otherwise never come to be. But they cannot explain anyone's individual experience - and if you try to explain the University solely in terms of its traditions, the explanation will come up woefully short.

So try as I might, I couldn't explain to those junior high students, my sister, those (then) first-year students or anyone else who asks why exactly it is I like it here. My reasons, are, well, mine. Like how terrific it is to wake up on Saturday mornings in autumn and hear the marching band practicing "The Victors" over on Elbel Field. Or that rush of working incredibly hard and then really acing the exam. Or how it feels to watch another winter slowly, quietly settle on the Diag.

My reasons might not be everybody else's. And those who ask might not really know until they live their own University experience.

Students have a tendency to imagine that no one has ever experienced the University quite this way before. Many will argue that they have had the best time anyone has ever had at the University of Michigan.

They're all right.

But the University's history is full of unique stories - grab a University alumnus the next time you see one and ask her or him for a story - a real story, not a repeated tradition - from their college days. Odds are they'll have a good one.

The University has the largest living alumni base of any university in the country. University grads live in every state, in hundreds of countries. So all those stories, all those students - what does that mean for those of us right here, right now? How do we mark ourselves and our experiences, to differentiate ourselves from all that came before us and all that will follow? How do we explain what it means to live and learn here?

We not only follow tradition, we deviate from it, too. And that's how we build legends.

- Erin Marsh can be reached over e-mail at eemarsh@umich.edu

11-17-97