These are extremely separate bubbles. Just like Republicans and Democrats, people who are all-in on college sports are practically on a different planet from people who don’t care for college sports. They pretty much don’t associate at all, except perhaps at the dinner table on holidays (such as the infamous Thanksgiving).
I suspect there’s some strong correlations between political affiliation and college sports preferences, but it’s only a hunch, not something I’ve researched.
They’re kinda screwed if they don’t. Universities compete for students. Schools that can’t attract loads of students end up shutting down programs, laying off staff, shrinking, and even closing completely.
Students are applying to a lot of different schools these days. Reach schools and safe schools. There’s all kinds of advice about what schools a student should apply to based on their skills and interests.
Ultimately, once a student gets offers from their applied schools, the final choice can come down to many non-academic factors. How nice is the school’s campus landscaping? How’s student life? How many extracurricular programs are there? How good are the school’s sports teams and facilities?
Education advocates often say none of that stuff should matter, yet if the choice is up to the student it absolutely does matter.
The university I went to is one of the top in my country for the programs I was interested in. It’s long had a reputation for having an ugly, minimalist campus without much to do. The rigour of its academic programs and competitive student body has been reflected in numerous cases of students taking their own lives.
Since I started there (now since graduated but visit often), the school has spent a ton on landscaping and beautifying, constructing beautiful new buildings and renovating old ones. The school now has new gyms, rock climbing walls, and a new food court / study area with lots of tall windows looking onto a green space. There’s also a brand new building for student housing being built as we speak.
And here’s the thing. All the new buildings and programs have new administrative staff. There are more staff than ever running open houses and prospective student tour programs and summer camps for kids. The school is open year round yet through all of these additions and upgrades, enrolment hasn’t increased very much.
And that’s the bottom line. Schools have to spend loads of money just to tread water. Many other schools are losing students outright despite all their spending on upgrades and new staff. These are publicly funded schools, by the way, not private schools.
Centipedes are scary because they have so many legs and they scurry very fast with incredible agility. In general I think we feel a revulsion to small critters with that kind of speed and agility. But if they’re too small (fly sized or smaller) then it’s more annoyance than revulsion.
The many legs thing is a real mystery though! I think it might be some kind of proxy for venomous critters, as spiders and centipedes have more legs than insects and also tend to be more venomous (apart from some Hymenopterans).
That’s not particular to Americans. Lots of people put their heads down rather than try to fight. Look at Russia!
This phenomenon is called depoliticizaton. Philosopher Vlad Vexler talks about it often.
Reminds me of German chancellor Franz von Papen. He was instrumental in bringing Hitler to power but he never accepted responsibility for it, even though he lived until 1969!
Except Los Angeles. We don’t need that kind of superficiality here!
I’m not sure exactly. The suicides happened a few times when I was there. I don’t pay as much attention to it now but there have been some cases that made the news.
When I was there and someone took their own life, people protested for better mental health services. I don’t know if they hired more therapists or not since then. My own experience with counselling at school was very positive!