A conversation about campus construction

I write this from the M-level of the library, and I cannot help but be distracted. For one, there's drilling. It's loud. The Brody Learning Commons might be a harbor of scholastic solace for Hopkins classes to come, but for this freshman, the construction site of the future library extension has yielded nothing but grief, distracting me from studying and keeping me from getting to CharMar from Keyser Quad come lunchtime. I'd go work downstairs, but I'm not one for the prison vibe.

Call me shallow, but aesthetics, it would appear, are everything.

I've never regarded myself as a superficial person, and until around this time last fall, I would have regarded – or disregarded – the above creed with the dismissive snobbery of someone who believes they can look beyond the veneer of things and instead assess them at their intrinsic value.

And then I applied to college.

It was in the throes of the admissions process that I realized the harsh truth about myself – and, likely, the millions of other high school seniors in pursuit of yes-es from what we deemed "good schools."

I was fickle. And so was, it seemed, every other participant in our quest: my parents, my college counselor, my peers. Amidst every factor I was urged to consider in my decision-making – scholastic interests, campus life, and of course eligibility – one was pitched to me as nonpareil.

"You really won't know until you visit," they told me.

It was true. The "gut feeling" I experienced last spring when I visited Homewood was the crux in my matriculation decision. In short, Hopkins was pretty, so I came here.

Amidst every other appeal of this school, the factor that spurred my choice was irreducibly superficial, based almost entirely in the sheer attractiveness of this campus. The "gut feeling" – the maxim of the college admissions process, its propagated two-word nucleus, its panacea – is rooted in little more than shallowness.

My point: appearances matter. It comes as no surprise to me that an uncanny parallel exists between Forbes' list of most beautiful college campuses and U.S. News and Report's list of most "popular" colleges.

While the latter lies rooted in hard statistics (yield rates, admission rates, and so on) and the former is a fount of subjectivity, it's no coincidence that several schools – Stanford, Yale, and Princeton, to name the triumvirate – top both.

Americans love archetypes, and the archetype of the consummate American collegiate experience is one of sunny quads and stone spires, iron gates and – yes – ivy, capital I if you please. Attractiveness, it seems, is an integral component of any "good school."

But I digress – now back to M-level. The drilling has waned; my disenchantment has not. In my first weeks at Hopkins, I have seen the campus in a state of architectural flux: from the construction of the Learning Commons to the first stages of the Charles Street beautification to the desolate stretch of dirt – whatever that is – between Mudd Hall and the Rec Center.

I understand that these efforts are transient and ultimately beneficial; my woes, ergo, are petty.

I worry, however, for the droves of high school seniors who will spill onto campus in the coming months with the intent of facilitating a patently harrowing decision. What think they, I wonder, upon facing the cranes rising over the Beach, or the closure and reconstruction of North Charles Street, slated to begin in January 2012?

As our generation has grown up, Hopkins has enjoyed a state of flux, transcending our parents' era's question of "oh, so you're going to be a doctor?" into a scholastic echelon that commands respect across disciplines from creative writing to engineering.

I have no doubt that the university's current efforts to beautify our campus will ultimately embody Hopkins' recent advancements as an academic institution. However, to perpetuate these developments, our university must continue to attract prospective students. The problem, however, is that college-bound teenagers are fickle (I would know).

Appearances matter. No matter how respected, Hopkins has a history of facing competition in the admissions game: high school seniors can't seem to get enough of the Ivies, due largely to pure name value, but due also in part to the aesthetic archetype they embody.

Ironically, Homewood is an unequivocally beautiful campus, albeit one temporarily marred by scaffolding and construction fences.

In the midst of Homewood's period of physical flux, the institutions of the university – the admissions offices, the facilities departments – must capitalize on the present beauty of the campus in order to maintain the upwards trend of Hopkins' present institutional flux.

This projectile relies largely on the students that come to Homewood each fall. To receive the brightest and the best, we must first attract them.