In every self-contained community, there are always a few people who, for whatever reason, hold themselves above the rest. There are also those who will thankfully remain, for whatever reason, a bit more down to earth. But it’s difficult to spot at a first glance. Fashion doesn’t define the self-acknowledged elite in any logical way, and those who appear most earthy could be up to their hemp necklaces in pretension. But recently, with the return of (mostly) warm weather and the approaching Big Parade and O Circus, a few students have managed to literally transcend the masses.

By wearing stilts.

So while I’ve been walking down sunny campus sidewalks these past few weeks, gazing at the bevy of sun-relieved bodies sprawling across Wilder Bowl and contemplating, somewhat confusedly, the simultaneous rise of flats and wedges, which I should invest in, and what difference those three inches could possibly make in my life, or at least my potentially blistering heals and sore calf-muscles — others have been towering five feet above me.

Startling prospies, annoying upperclassmen, and stalking across the flat plains of Oberlin in clusters of three and four, like splinter-legged giraffes — who needs heels when they’ve got stilts?

Of course, stilts aren’t the only way to clamber across campus. Roller-bladed, roller-skated and skate-board-slated feet have been known to swiftly swerve past my bumbling, short-legged and suddenly plain-footed frame five-minutes to the hour. Where some panicked persons break into an all-out awkward duck run toward their 90 minutes of learning, more well-balanced undergrads slide calmly by on their unicycles. And above us all, above the tumult and sloth, the sun-bathing and over-extended Obie rush, are the daring, the ridiculous, the unhelmeted, triple-decker-bike riders. (Because when you’re teetering a bajillion feet up, you gotta have nice hair.)

And then there are the happy-footed travelers who shed their pretension — and their shoes — at the first hint of pleasant climate. Like hobbits and trolls before them, these tough-soled students are unaffected by my shallow preoccupations — seriously, flats or wedges?? — unphased by bitey ants and side-walk ruins, and unadmitted to the DeCafé. And in a social sphere both awkward and stilted, that’s pretty down to earth.