A Campus Cult

Exeter is a religion. It is a collection of faithful, dutiful and pious few, working hard for their salvation. Each of us is united in our desire for “heaven,” cognizant of our responsibilities towards that goal, and privy to the horrors that failing to fulfill these responsibilities might entail during the final judgment.We represent our church through our clothing. Maroon Exeter jackets, Exeter fleeces and Exeter shirts, stenciled with the symbols of our faith, Exeter. Proud in the battlefield (football, lacrosse, crew) we flaunt ourselves as Exonians, more worthy of the prizes of salvation than the hodgepodge group of blueberries down the street. They might have had their revelation first, but ours is definitive, and more complete.The heart and soul of Exeter lies not in Phillips Church, as Principal Hassan might have hinted, but inside our Library. The cold, concrete, vast and unwelcoming monument to knowledge, where within its quaint silence we will finish many assignments, and find ourselves one step closer to what comes after. Suffer without sleep, tread along and complete those countless, piling research papers, drinking cup noodles and sipping on flat root beer. A little martyrdom for faith, undoubtedly expected. Do not worry though, what comes after toil is better.Of course, like any religion, some followers fail. A forgetful few, afraid of their judgment, cannot endure the suffering and become slothful, unresponsive. These are our nihilists. They see no meaning in our work, and seek to unchain themselves. Free, they find themselves lost.The real sinners, the plagiarists, class-cutters, pagans and conjurers of evil will not even complete their sentence. They are cast out, their Exeter posters, key chains and shot glasses irrelevant in their exile, their chance at salvation extinguished.Salvation, of course, assumes many forms, each particular to the pious saved: admission to an Ivy, athletic scholarships or alternatively a small, but exclusive Liberal Arts school. The important part is that we get there, and it doesn’t matter how much we suffer, because just like any faithful believer, we know that what counts is what comes after.Many of you might have giggled at the comparisons I have thus outlined, or nodded in agreement, rebuking strongly this “institutional” mentality that forces students to be zealous faithful. But it’s all on us, Exonians. On all of us. We have deified college admissions to such lengths. We are the ones who choose to value a piece of paper on 18th century trade laws over sleep, the most basic of human needs. We choose to suffer through the hardships and toil on, making our own school experience sometimes un-enjoyable. Can we not allow ourselves to miss one assignment? Can we not reject one club opportunity? “It sucks, but it helps with colleges.”Can we not stop worrying about an inevitable tomorrow? Education is ideally the prize a student seeks, and yet in our twisted veneration we have replaced this with false idols of college acceptances. We relent to application requirements that match only a preconceived expectation of what being a good student is. 