Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder

13 Feb 2007, 20:38 p.m.

Sssssssss

Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2007 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.

UC Berkeley and Stanford have a rivalry. It took me a few years to grok their friendly rivalry, just as it was amazing the first time I played Jeopardy! with my husband and enjoyed it when he won just as when I did. Stanford and Cal are both good schools, and besides now I have the East Coast school folks to deal with. We merely hissed when Berkeley lecturers mention Stanford; the folks at Duke evidently scream to overpower the speaker's voice if he mentions UNC-Chapel Hill.

"Well, we just hiss to indicate the rivalry, but we don't cut off the speaker's free speech," I explained.

"Mentioning UNC doesn't count as free speech," said Duke-guy.

"What are you, 23?"

Comments

Rachel
14 Feb 2007, 0:53 a.m.

Apparantly we have different ideas of what it means to be 23! (see my blog today).

I've found the higher in academics you get the less school rivalries (which are inherently based in athletics, although I do think some of the public vs. private factors into it) matter. They're actually considered a bit low-brow by some of my professors (one who went to 'SC); it's something I have to practice, but I find that clinging to my Bruin pride is also a form of elitism (vs the shabby CSU I'm at now).

John
14 Feb 2007, 11:29 a.m.

I still think USC turns out some very snooty alum.... And no, they were not my rival school.