How do I know I go to college?

Many students despise getting those unsolicited J.Crew catalogs. I'm not one of them. In fact, I often dig into the recycling bins to retreive discarded catalogs from J.Crew and Banana Republic and even those nameless teeny-bopper catalogs that have managed somehow to get Oberlin students onto their mailing lists. But I do despise most of the other junk mail I get, and none more so than LiNK magazine.

I'm not exactly a media snob. I'm one of the few students I know who will admit to reading such inane, establishment corporate magazines as Vanity Fair, GQ, and Details. One of my dream jobs is to write for Playboy magazine. These publications aren't exactly on the intellectual level of, say, the Partisan Review. But because I appreciate such relatively light-weight publications, I think it is all the more powerful when I can say, definitively, that LiNK magazine is pure drivel.

I was appalled as I actually read it for the first time this week. Usually I take a cursory flip through the rag, checking for any cuties (the most recent cover caught my attention and is the only thing about the publication which continues to hold it), but never before have I actually attempted to read anything in LiNK's pages. I see now that I was not missing out on anything.

The articles would seem to be of interest-this most recent issue covers vital topics like what to eat when you're a poor college kid, what's happening in higher education now that enrollment levels are at an all-time high, the latest in technology news relevant to our generation, even more fun stuff like fashion and TV's Felicity. It's just that it's all so damn stupid. The writing isn't all bad, but most of it makes the latest Registration Supplement read like the New York Times.

And then something very frightening hit me. Is this what colleges are like? Is LiNK truly directed at its target college audience? Does Oberlin, or maybe me, fall somehow short of this? Maybe everyone else is in college, not us.

But I'm trying to avoid all of that cultural snobbery. Hell, in the pages of this very newspaper I have extolled the virtues of the Backstreet Boys and inane sitcoms. But somehow that's different from LiNK debating whether Felicity or My So-Called Life is the superior show. Perhaps I'm overestimating the Review, and the school in general, but I really think we're smarter than the people LiNK is hoping will read their magazine. I admit that writing on "Boy Meets World" might not exactly be hard-hitting journalism, but I think that my approach was a lot more intellectual than a mere "What's cooler: 'Boy Meets World' or 'Growing Pains'?" debate.

For instance, one article dwells on the fact that the word "phat" is not to be included in the revised Merriam-Webster's Dictionary. Oberlin students would likely have a great deal to say about the legitimization of colloquial American speech based on the inclusion of terms such as "dis." I somehow doubt the discourse on the subject would amount to students simply lamenting how un-hip the dictionary is.

Does the Oberlin audience really fall so far out of the mainstream? Evidently. If the Review started covering how to look sharp in the latest from DKNY, or started talking about "grrrls" and the internet, I would resign in a heartbeat. It's hard to point to exact instances; it's more that this publication leaves a general bad taste in my mouth. But beyond than that, it leaves me wondering who's the one with the problem: me or Link?

I don't believe in, nor do I care about, the college ratings system. I think it's more interesting to think about how the lists are compiled, how statistics are manipulated, than it is to understand that Princeton is the only Ivy League school highly ranked by the Princeton Review. I don't care for mindless soundbites about Lewinsky or about feminism in advertising, especially taken out of context. I have Newsweek magazine for that.

I don't care that the readers of LiNK are learning that "colleges and universities across the U.S. [are] not just for extremely wealthy, young white men anymore." You're kidding! Thanks, LiNK!

Nor do I care for your insipid record reviews and truly uninteresting news. You see, if I want that, I can read GQ or Details. At least those publications, tawdry as they are, retain a certain savoire faire. They can publish stories longer than three paragraphs without risking losing their readership.

It makes a lot of sense to me that this magazine is published by a television station, the College Television Network. I wonder if it's coming soon to Oberlin. Somehow I doubt there would be much interest. The reason LiNK isn't a good magazine, ultimately, is that it's dumb. Eloquent, right? But who would disagree? It's dumb, dumb, dumb and aimed right at you and me, the prototypical college kids. My one reservation is this: who is right about the college audience, me or LiNK?