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El Laberinto, 1971-1987
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FRESHMEN:* WELCOME TO THE FACTORY One of the most amazing obstacles in making the transition from high school to college involves the labeling on rest room doors. They are marked MEN and WOMEN instead of BOYS and GIRLS. It is a crude but relatively efficient method of producing a critical adjustment in your psychological composition. There is no doubt about it, colleges are clever rascals. Other forms of indoctrination are not so blatant but they are equally effective. The entire secret of attaining the status of graduate while maintaining a semblence of your true pre-collegiate personality is to keep telling yourself that a rest-room door label doesn't make you a MAN or a WOMAN. The rest comes easy and it operates on basically the same principle. The idea is to learn the mechanics of the curricula but not to buy the accompanying philosophy. The "Philosophy", for want of a better word, is simple: If it produces profit -it is good, if it causes losses -it is bad. It is the American way, the Protestant ethic, the definition of material success. It fails and refuses to admit that there are needs other than those which can be fulfilled by dollars. It stinks. College will certainly tempt you to adopt this bastard of logic, or lack thereof, but there is saving Grace. Amazingly, it comes from within. Unless you are one of those unfortunate many who accept the restroom labels as highest authority, your unconscious self will jolt you with what will probably be a final reminder that the system is about to clasp you firmly in its well-oiled jaws and doom you forever to the status of robot. Heed that jolt! It will probably come to you sometime before the end of your second semester and it will take the form of your first and maybe last and most serious thought. If you feel insulted now, wait until it hits you. "What," You will ask of your mind, "What in the hell am I doing here?" If by then you are still a very together person, you will tell your mind that your body is in college to learn as much as possible about our socio-economic-political system so that when you get back to the real world it won't screw over you as it has done to most of those around you. If upon graduation you still believe what you told yourself on that historic occasion, you will not only be ahead of and beyond the system, you will also have the system by the ass. And (by the way) you will be the member of still another minority. Have a nice life! * * * [photo of building] *AND WOMEN 6
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FRESHMEN:* WELCOME TO THE FACTORY One of the most amazing obstacles in making the transition from high school to college involves the labeling on rest room doors. They are marked MEN and WOMEN instead of BOYS and GIRLS. It is a crude but relatively efficient method of producing a critical adjustment in your psychological composition. There is no doubt about it, colleges are clever rascals. Other forms of indoctrination are not so blatant but they are equally effective. The entire secret of attaining the status of graduate while maintaining a semblence of your true pre-collegiate personality is to keep telling yourself that a rest-room door label doesn't make you a MAN or a WOMAN. The rest comes easy and it operates on basically the same principle. The idea is to learn the mechanics of the curricula but not to buy the accompanying philosophy. The "Philosophy", for want of a better word, is simple: If it produces profit -it is good, if it causes losses -it is bad. It is the American way, the Protestant ethic, the definition of material success. It fails and refuses to admit that there are needs other than those which can be fulfilled by dollars. It stinks. College will certainly tempt you to adopt this bastard of logic, or lack thereof, but there is saving Grace. Amazingly, it comes from within. Unless you are one of those unfortunate many who accept the restroom labels as highest authority, your unconscious self will jolt you with what will probably be a final reminder that the system is about to clasp you firmly in its well-oiled jaws and doom you forever to the status of robot. Heed that jolt! It will probably come to you sometime before the end of your second semester and it will take the form of your first and maybe last and most serious thought. If you feel insulted now, wait until it hits you. "What," You will ask of your mind, "What in the hell am I doing here?" If by then you are still a very together person, you will tell your mind that your body is in college to learn as much as possible about our socio-economic-political system so that when you get back to the real world it won't screw over you as it has done to most of those around you. If upon graduation you still believe what you told yourself on that historic occasion, you will not only be ahead of and beyond the system, you will also have the system by the ass. And (by the way) you will be the member of still another minority. Have a nice life! * * * [photo of building] *AND WOMEN 6
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