Welcome, Class of 2014

"Each August since 1998, Beloit College has released the Beloit College Mindset List. It provides a look at the cultural touchstones that shape the lives of students entering college this fall. The creation of Beloit’s Keefer Professor of the Humanities Tom McBride and former Public Affairs Director Ron Nief, it was originally created as a reminder to faculty to be aware of dated references, and quickly became a catalog of the rapidly changing worldview of each new generation."

Our favorites this year:

Benny Hill, Sam Kinison, Sam Walton, Bert Parks and Tony Perkins have always been dead.

1. Few in the class know how to write in cursive.

6. Buffy has always been meeting her obligations to hunt down Lothos and the other blood-suckers at Hemery High.

7. “Caramel macchiato” and “venti half-caf vanilla latte” have always been street corner lingo.

9. Had it remained operational, the villainous computer HAL could be their college classmate this fall . . . .

11. John McEnroe has never played professional tennis.

12. Clint Eastwood is better known as a sensitive director than as Dirty Harry.

19. They never twisted the coiled handset wire aimlessly around their wrists while chatting on the phone.

26. Unless they found one in their grandparents’ closet, they have never seen a carousel of Kodachrome slides.

27. Computers have never lacked a CD-ROM disk drive.

28. They’ve never recognized that pointing to their wrists was a request for the time of day.

32. Czechoslovakia has never existed.

33. Second-hand smoke has always been an official carcinogen.

52. There have always been women priests in the Anglican Church.

53. J.R. Ewing has always been dead and gone. Hasn’t he?

55. Rock bands have always played at presidential inaugural parties.

60. Walmart has never sold handguns over the counter in the lower 48.

71. The nation has never approved of the job Congress is doing.

The most alarming fact on display -- the most bone-chilling reminder that these kids have become acclimated to the bizarre, the perverse, the positively grotesque being "normal" is #38: Bud Selig has always been the Commissioner of Major League Baseball. Saint Rita, pray for us.

Full list HERE.