The Beloit College Mindset List for the Class
of 2014
Beloit, Wis. – Born when Ross Perot was warning
about a giant sucking sound and Bill Clinton was
apologizing for pain in his marriage, members of
this fall’s entering college class of 2014 have
emerged as a post-email generation for whom the
digital world is routine and technology is just
too slow.
Each August since 1998, Beloit College has
released the Beloit College Mindset List. It
provides a look at the cultural touchstones that
shape the lives of students entering college
this fall. The creation of Beloit’s Keefer
Professor of the Humanities Tom McBride and
former Public Affairs Director Ron Nief, it was
originally created as a reminder to faculty to
be aware of dated references, and quickly became
a catalog of the rapidly changing worldview of
each new generation. The Mindset List website at
www.beloit.edu/mindset, the Mediasite webcast
and its Facebook page receive more than 400,000
hits annually.
The class of 2014 has never found Korean-made
cars unusual on the Interstate and five hundred
cable channels, of which they will watch a
handful, have always been the norm. Since
"digital" has always been in the cultural DNA,
they've never written in cursive and with cell
phones to tell them the time, there is no need
for a wrist watch. Dirty Harry (who’s that?) is
to them a great Hollywood director. The America
they have inherited is one of soaring American
trade and budget deficits; Russia has presumably
never aimed nukes at the United States and China
has always posed an economic threat.
Nonetheless, they plan to enjoy college. The
males among them are likely to be a minority.
They will be armed with iPhones and BlackBerries,
on which making a phone call will be only one of
many, many functions they will perform. They
will now be awash with a computerized technology
that will not distinguish information and
knowledge. So it will be up to their professors
to help them. A generation accustomed to instant
access will need to acquire the patience of
scholarship. They will discover how to research
information in books and journals and not just
on-line. Their professors, who might be tempted
to think that they are hip enough and therefore
ready and relevant to teach the new generation,
might remember that Kurt Cobain is now on the
classic oldies station. The college class of
2014 reminds us, once again, that a generation
comes and goes in the blink of our eyes, which
are, like the rest of us, getting older and
older.Most students entering college for the
first time this fall—the Class of 2014—were born
in 1992.
For these students, Benny Hill, Sam Kinison, Sam
Walton, Bert Parks and Tony Perkins have always
been dead.
- Few in the class know how to write in
cursive.
- Email is just too slow, and they seldom
if ever use snail mail.
- “Go West, Young College Grad” has always
implied “and don’t stop until you get to
Asia…and learn Chinese along the way.”
- Al Gore has always been animated.
- Los Angelenos have always been trying to
get along.
- Buffy has always been meeting her
obligations to hunt down Lothos and the
other blood-suckers at Hemery High.
- “Caramel macchiato” and “venti half-caf
vanilla latte” have always been street
corner lingo.
- With increasing numbers of ramps,
Braille signs, and handicapped parking
spaces, the world has always been trying
harder to accommodate people with
disabilities.
- Had it remained operational, the
villainous computer HAL could be their
college classmate this fall, but they have a
better chance of running into Miley Cyrus’s
folks on Parents’ Weekend.
- Entering college this fall in a country
where a quarter of young people under 18
have at least one immigrant parent, they
aren't afraid of immigration...unless it
involves "real" aliens from another planet.
- John McEnroe has never played
professional tennis.
- Clint Eastwood is better known as a
sensitive director than as Dirty Harry.
- Parents and teachers feared that Beavis
and Butt-head might be the voice of a lost
generation.
- Doctor Kevorkian has never been licensed
to practice medicine.
- Colorful lapel ribbons have always been
worn to indicate support for a cause.
- Korean cars have always been a staple on
American highways.
- Trading Chocolate the Moose for Patti
the Platypus helped build their Beanie Baby
collection.
- Fergie is a pop singer, not a princess.
- They never twisted the coiled handset
wire aimlessly around their wrists while
chatting on the phone.
- DNA fingerprinting and maps of the human
genome have always existed.
- Woody Allen, whose heart has wanted what
it wanted, has always been with Soon-Yi
Previn.
- Cross-burning has always been deemed
protected speech.
- Leasing has always allowed the folks to
upgrade their tastes in cars.
- “Cop Killer” by rapper Ice-T has never
been available on a recording.
- Leno and Letterman have always been
trading insults on opposing networks.
- Unless they found one in their
grandparents’ closet, they have never seen a
carousel of Kodachrome slides.
- Computers have never lacked a CD-ROM
disk drive.
- They’ve never recognized that pointing
to their wrists was a request for the time
of day.
- Reggie Jackson has always been enshrined
in Cooperstown.
- “Viewer Discretion” has always been an
available warning on TV shows.
- The first home computer they probably
touched was an Apple II or Mac II; they are
now in a museum.
- Czechoslovakia has never existed.
- Second-hand smoke has always been an
official carcinogen.
- “Assisted Living” has always been
replacing nursing homes, while Hospice has
always offered an alternative to the
hospital.
- Once they got through security, going to
the airport has always resembled going to
the mall.
- Adhesive strips have always been
available in varying skin tones.
- Whatever their parents may have thought
about the year they were born, Queen
Elizabeth declared it an “Annus Horribilis.”
- Bud Selig has always been the
Commissioner of Major League Baseball.
- Pizza jockeys from Domino’s have never
killed themselves to get your pizza there in
under 30 minutes.
- There have always been HIV positive
athletes in the Olympics.
- American companies have always done
business in Vietnam.
- Potato has always ended in an “e” in New
Jersey per vice presidential edict.
- Russians and Americans have always been
living together in space.
- The dominance of television news by the
three networks passed while they were still
in their cribs.
- They have always had a chance to do
community service with local and federal
programs to earn money for college.
- Nirvana is on the classic oldies
station.
- Children have always been trying to
divorce their parents.
- Someone has always gotten married in
space.
- While they were babbling in strollers,
there was already a female Poet Laureate of
the United States.
- Toothpaste tubes have always stood up on
their caps.
- Food has always been irradiated.
- There have always been women priests in
the Anglican Church.
- J.R. Ewing has always been dead and
gone. Hasn’t he?
- The historic bridge at Mostar in Bosnia
has always been a copy.
- Rock bands have always played at
presidential inaugural parties.
- They may have assumed that parents’
complaints about Black Monday had to do with
punk rockers from L.A., not Wall Street.
- A purple dinosaur has always supplanted
Barney Google and Barney Fife.
- Beethoven has always been a good name
for a dog.
- By the time their folks might have
noticed Coca Cola’s new Tab Clear, it was
gone.
- Walmart has never sold handguns over the
counter in the lower 48.
- Presidential appointees have always been
required to be more precise about paying
their nannies’ withholding tax, or else.
- Having hundreds of cable channels but
nothing to watch has always been routine.
- Their parents’ favorite TV sitcoms have
always been showing up as movies.
- The U.S, Canada, and Mexico have always
agreed to trade freely.
- They first met Michelangelo when he was
just a computer virus.
- Galileo is forgiven and welcome back
into the Roman Catholic Church.
- Ruth Bader Ginsburg has always sat on
the Supreme Court.
- They have never worried about a Russian
missile strike on the U.S.
- It seems the Post Office has always been
going broke.
- The artist formerly known as Snoop Doggy
Dogg has always been rapping.
- The nation has never approved of the job
Congress is doing.
- One way or another, “It’s the economy,
stupid” and always has been.
- Silicone-gel breast implants have always
been regulated.
- They've always been able to blast off
with the Sci-Fi (SYFY) Channel.
- Honda has always been a major competitor
on Memorial Day at Indianapolis.
This website was originally
developed by
Charles Camp for
CIVL
1101.
This site is
Maintained by the
Department of Civil Engineering
at the University of Memphis.
Your comments and questions are welcomed.
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