The differences between UNB and STU aren’t just geographical, they’re philosophical
Ian Bishop attends UNB like it’s work.
He spends 12 hours a day in a computer science lounge with his friend, who happens to be a tutor. It’s hang out time, but it’s also strictly business.
I bust in on the study session, arms up in the air proclaiming how lost I got in Head Hall and automatically begin introducing myself.
I just gave it away. They know.
They can tell by my curiosity regarding their Macs, my hot pink dress and tights, and because I’m acting like I’ve arrived for a party. They know I’ve pilgrimaged from STU to the faraway lands of the engineering faculty– crossing the invisible line that marks their territory.
“Sure, we share the SUB building. But we built it, so it’s more like, we allow St Thomas students to use our facilities,” says Bishop.
Bishop takes me around and tells me the history behind each building, quantifying and explaining to me that things at UNB are what they have to be: practical.
“It’s like each faculty is a high school within a high school, “ he says. “These are the only people you associate with.”
Head Hall’s main building was built first and attachments for each specific faculty branched off. It’s like a high school. The halls have that vacuous test tube feel of the science wing, the smell of soldering irons and rows of aluminum lockers shut with anonymous neon combination locks.
We pass a fellow UNB-er and I ask Bishop if he knows him. I suggest we say hello and make a new friend.
“That would never work,” he says. “We just don’t work like that. Relationships are logical down here. I don’t even talk to my classmates because in a class with 300 students, if you make a friend with the guy sitting next to you, the next day it might be a completely different guy. You might never see him again. It’s logistics.”
Back in the lounge, one of Bishop’s friends tries to explain to me the liberal arts stereotype.
“They are hippies, granola-ish, laid back,” he laughs. “There’s the idea that any bullshit you answer on a test will get you a good grade. But in reverse, we are also rich snotty kids, we pay more for school, we think we are better because we do calculus. When I tell him about my failed attempt at making a friend in the hallway, he laughs. I ask how he might make a friend at STU and he replies, “I’d ask them to derive something.”
Unlike UNB, STU is a warm, social place. I know this because as I sit in James Dunn trying to interview Andrew Titus, it feels like a game of musical chairs. I’m asked to scoot by countless students, a few butting in with a question about an assignment, one for a simple “What’s up?” I brought a professional looking little tape recorder but all of a sudden feel silly with the formalities.
This is the kind of equal interaction that gets every liberal arts student receives at STU. I think Titus and I just high fived our hello. “They are downtown Manhattan, and we are a nice little neighbourhood,” is how he puts it.
Titus has experienced UNB and STU as a teacher and a student so he thinks of himself as a constant in the equation.
“I teach with full on, all the time, over-the-top craziness,” he says. “I mean, I bring it the same way there, as I do here, so it’s not me.”
”I have to get hugely charged up to even get the littlest bit of spark out of [UNB students]. Whereas I can get into class here and just say ‘Hey Everybody this is what we are doing,’ and all of a sudden it explodes in there and it’s conversation in every direction.”
Then, Titus imitates the sound of a bomb exploding. If the interview were at Head Hall, an innocent bystander might have ducked but at James Dunn it goes by unnoticed.
When our interview is over, I confide in Titus about an idea I have had throughout this whole experience: the HUG-A-UNB-er Day. I ask him if it’s a good solution,
“I’m a firm believer in diversity and people being different. The personalities between the universities are a necessary thing. We’d probably get charged for sexual harassment. They just don’t like to be touched, and that’s fine. I know a few who might be okay with it; I can direct you towards them. But I think generally we should leave those barriers to be broken at the Cellar.”
