All right guys, can everybody hear me in the back? Parents, go ahead and turn up your hearing aids if you need to! Haha, just messing with you.
Anyways, welcome to Batesman College. I’m Tyler and I’ll be showing you around. Now, you guys probably already recognize Batesman from the Boner University movies, which were all filmed right here. Pretty cool, right? That was our campus in the original 1983 Boner University: The Motion Picture, and then in Boner U 2: Panty Raid, Boner University III: Dorklinger’s Revenge, then in Boner University: Kappa Gamma Boner, Boner University: Red, White, and Boner, BU2000, and in some of the establishing shots of Boners in Brazil and Euroboner. Last year’s Still Bonin’ After All These Years was filmed in Vancouver. Still, pretty cool.
Life at Batesman is a lot different than what you saw in those old ‘80s movies. Here’s how I like to think of it: In the Boner University movies, Riggs, Mueller, Dorklinger, Funky Fresh, and Landfill were all the best of friends, right? Well, the students of Batesman today are more than just friends. We’re a family.
And once you arrive here on campus, you’ll feel it. There’s nothing like walking around campus with 1400 of your brothers and sisters. And we take family very seriously around here. In fact, by the end of freshman year, 82% of our students have changed their last name to Batesman. And in one of our unique traditions, a few of students each year are legally adopted by President Batesman. Pretty cool, right? I guess it’s how President Batesman got the nickname Highfather the Unholy, and it’s part of the reason this campus just feels like home. Everybody knows your name, especially if your name is Batesman. Which it probably will be. Very cool. Plus, 90% of students get internships. Oh, I see dad’s ears just perked up on that one! I’ve got the parents attention now!
It’s this sense of community that connects each of us at Batesman. I’ve been here for three years and I’ve never been homesick. Maybe at other colleges, kids get nervous at first and miss their moms and dads, but at Batesman, nobody even calls or texts their parents for the first three years because it’s forbidden and we’re too busy in our 80 different clubs and organizations and our phones are confiscated on Orientation Weekend! So cool.
Now if you look in the center of our quad, you’ll see our famous fountain. You probably recognize it from the cover of our viewbook and you definitely recognize it from Boner University III, where it was the location Dorklinger’s top-secret lab where he invented bikini-dissolving sunscreen. Haha. Today, it’s where we have of one of our most beloved campus traditions – the Batesman Ritual Cleansing. They say that unless a student washes his hands and feet (in right foot, right hand, left hand, left foot order) three times each day, he won’t graduate in four years. Does it work? Hey, I don’t know, but I’m not taking the risk of missing a cleansing and not graduating before the Earth is wiped clean, renewed, refurbished, and rejuvenated!
Today’s students look a lot different than they did in those movies. You’re probably looking at students in their one-sleeved yellow unitards, with shaved heads, and holding metallic spheres, thinking, “What’s going on here, Tyler? Some kind of dress code?” Haha, no way. Not at Batesman. Lots of students are just more comfortable this way. Plus, the unitards will make us easier to identify on the Day of Transitioning, and the metal spheres are gifts for Tonatiuh, the solar god-king. I know, crazy college traditions, right? Trust me, it’ll make tons of sense when you get here.
Here’s the dining hall, where Landfill’s famous Margarita Blaster 9000 went out of control and knocked everybody’s bras off. Um, a cannon that shoots tequila? That’s only in the movies, guys. Our dining hall is just a place where kids hang out, adhere to a strict kale fast, and drink Kool-Aid. But you don’t have to drink it – it’s totally up to you!
Oh, hey, there’s President Batesman, the Highfather. Ton-ti-onwe, Highfather!
That? Oh, ton-ti-onwe is our traditional Batesman greeting. Nobody really knows what it means, but if you see a fellow Batesman, just tell him ton-ti-onwe and Tonatiuh will smile upon you and save a place for you in his Interstellar Sun Blimp. Sure, it sounds a little goofy the first couple of times you say it, but it’s just part of being a Batesman. That’s college life for you! Haha.
You guys are going to love it here. Moms and dads, you guys getting those checkbooks out yet? Haha. But I think you can all see what a special place this is. Let me leave you with a quote from Highfather Batesman that I think sums up the Batesman College experience perfectly: “Four years at Batesman, final four years of human existence.” Ton-ti-onwe, you guys.
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Nathan Thornton is an actual, real, by-god writer who tells his blurry, weeping reflection this exact thing every single morning. He lives in a place (Ohio, don’t worry about it) (the middle-ish part), works at a place (types, mostly), went to college at a place (large, bland, land-grant kind of thing), and his work has appeared online (go and find it if you want to, or I guarantee he’d send you a bunch of it if you asked him to). And when he’s not writing short humor pieces or phony baloney third-person bios to accompany them, Nathan Thornton is me.