Every your Beloit College puts together a “Mindset List” of its entering freshmen, this year for the class of 2011, generally born in 1989. See here for more info on the Mindset List. These were of great interest to us when I worked in college student development and give a good, if generalized, picture of the new students on campus. The list or U.S. students is first. Massey University in New Zealand, with inspiration from Beloit, put together their own version of the Mindset List. Their list is second, below. It is interesting to see the differences between the 18 year old new college students of both countries on opposite sides of the world.
BELOIT COLLEGE’S MINDSET LIST®
FOR THE CLASS OF 2011
Most of the students entering College this fall, members of the Class of 2011, were born in 1989. For them, Alvin Ailey, Andrei Sakharov, Huey Newton, Emperor Hirohito, Ted Bundy, Abbie Hoffman, and Don the Beachcomber have always been dead.
1. What Berlin wall?
2. Humvees, minus the artillery, have always been available to the public.
3. Rush Limbaugh and the “Dittoheads” have always been lambasting liberals.
4. They never “rolled down” a car window.
5. Michael Moore has always been angry and funny.
6. They may confuse the Keating Five with a rock group.
7. They have grown up with bottled water.
8. General Motors has always been working on an electric car.
9. Nelson Mandela has always been free and a force in South Africa.
10. Pete Rose has never played baseball.
11. Rap music has always been mainstream.
12. Religious leaders have always been telling politicians what to do, or else!
13. “Off the hook” has never had anything to do with a telephone.
14. Music has always been “unplugged.”
15. Russia has always had a multi-party political system.
16. Women have always been police chiefs in major cities.
17. They were born the year Harvard Law Review Editor Barack Obama announced he might run for office some day.
18. The NBA season has always gone on and on and on and on.
19. Classmates could include Michelle Wie, Jordin Sparks, and Bart Simpson.
20. Half of them may have been members of the Baby-sitters Club.
21. Eastern Airlines has never “earned their wings” in their lifetime.
22. No one has ever been able to sit down comfortably to a meal of “liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.”
23. Wal-Mart has always been a larger retailer than Sears and has always employed more workers than GM.
24. Being “lame” has to do with being dumb or inarticulate, not disabled.
25. Wolf Blitzer has always been serving up the news on CNN.
26. Katie Couric has always had screen cred.
27. Al Gore has always been running for president or thinking about it.
28. They never found a prize in a Coca-Cola “MagiCan.”
29. They were too young to understand Judas Priest’s subliminal messages.
30. When all else fails, the Prozac defense has always been a possibility.
31. Multigrain chips have always provided healthful junk food.
32. They grew up in Wayne’s World.
33. U2 has always been more than a spy plane.
34. They were introduced to Jack Nicholson as “The Joker.”
35. Stadiums, rock tours and sporting events have always had corporate names.
36. American rock groups have always appeared in Moscow.
37. Commercial product placements have been the norm in films and on TV.
38. On Parents’ Day on campus, their folks could be mixing it up with Lisa Bonet and Lenny Kravitz with daughter Zöe, or Kathie Lee and Frank Gifford with son Cody.
39. Fox has always been a major network.
40. They drove their parents crazy with the Beavis and Butt-Head laugh.
41. The “Blue Man Group” has always been everywhere.
42. Women’s studies majors have always been offered on campus.
43. Being a latchkey kid has never been a big deal.
44. Thanks to MySpace and Facebook, autobiography can happen in real time.
45. They learned about JFK from Oliver Stone and Malcolm X from Spike Lee.
46. Most phone calls have never been private.
47. High definition television has always been available.
48. Microbreweries have always been ubiquitous.
49. Virtual reality has always been available when the real thing failed.
50. Smoking has never been allowed in public spaces in France.
51. China has always been more interested in making money than in reeducation.
52. Time has always worked with Warner.
53. Tiananmen Square is a 2008 Olympics venue, not the scene of a massacre.
54. The purchase of ivory has always been banned.
55. MTV has never featured music videos.
56. The space program has never really caught their attention except in disasters.
57. Jerry Springer has always been lowering the level of discourse on TV.
58. They get much more information from Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert than from the newspaper.
59. They’re always texting 1 n other.
60. They will encounter roughly equal numbers of female and male professors in the classroom.
61. They never saw Johnny Carson live on television.
62. They have no idea who Rusty Jones was or why he said “goodbye to rusty cars.”
63. Avatars have nothing to do with Hindu deities.
64. Chavez has nothing to do with iceberg lettuce and everything to do with oil.
65. Illinois has been trying to ban smoking since the year they were born.
66. The World Wide Web has been an online tool since they were born.
67. Chronic fatigue syndrome has always been debilitating and controversial.
68. Burma has always been Myanmar.
69. Dilbert has always been ridiculing cubicle culture.
70. Food packaging has always included nutritional labeling.
This year’s list doesn’t seem all that significant – like a slow news day.
The 2007 New Zealand Mindset List
Most students starting university in 2007 were born in 1988. For these students:
–Fast Post has always been available.
–The ozone hole has always been a worry for sun-loving New Zealanders.
–New Zealanders have never been able to smoke on planes.
–Tens of thousands of New Zealanders have always been on surgical waiting lists.
–Soviet troops have never been in Afghanistan.
–The Iran-Iraq war has always been over.
–Bola has always been the name of a devastating cyclone.
–Tomorrow’s Schools has always been a government policy for radical school reform.
–New Zealanders have always tried their luck on pokie machines.
–Politicians have always been ignoring election spending legislation, and getting away with it.
–New Zealand lighthouse keepers have always been unemployed.
–Japanese import cars have always been cheap and plentiful.
–Inflation has always been less than 10 percent.
–Employment at freezing works has always been a dead-end job.
–Air New Zealand has always been a private corporation.
–Roger Douglas has always been a sacked Finance Minister.
–Bastion Point has always belonged to Ngati Whatua.
–There have always been median barriers on Auckland’s motorways.
–There has always been a toll bridge across the Tauranga Harbour.
–The average Auckland house has always cost more than $161,000.
–Tracy Chapman has always been a hit songwriter.
–Ben Johnson has always been a disgraced Olympic athlete.
–In New Zealand, Brian Brake (renown photographer), Louis Johnson (Wellington poet), John Ross Marshall (former Prime Minister) and Cardigan Bay (legendary champion pacer) have always been dead.
–Internationally, Enzo Ferrari (car designer), Andy Gibb (youngest Bee Gee), Louis L’Amour (American western novelist), Roy Orbison (rock-and-roll pioneer) and Philippe de Rothschile (French winemaker) have always been dead.