Kevin Bacon has always maintained six degrees of separation in the cinematic universe. (Class of 2017, #48)

Sometimes Messrs. McBride and Nief use a term in a way that signals that they really don’t know what it means. For example, “six degrees of separation.”

The idea of “six degrees of separation” is that two people can be connected through a chain of mutual acquaintances, with no more than six steps between them.

(Stanley Milgram’s small world experiment is said to be one of the sources of this claim. When I was in grad school, we were told that the “six degrees” were the result of a thought experiment: Every community in the U.S. has a number of community leaders who know many members of the community and their representative in Congress. Everyone is known by one of these leaders. Presuming all members of Congress know one another, then there are five degrees between me and anyone else in the country. Maybe the President fits in there too to make it six; I can’t remember the details.)

The game “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” was created by three Albright College students in 1994 (or a year before the Class of 2017 was born), purportedly after watching Footloose and The Air Up There back-to-back. The game involves connecting an actor (or other movie personnel) to Kevin Bacon through links of people working on films together.

The clue that Messrs. McBride and Nief don’t understand this is that they claim that “Kevin Bacon has always maintained six degrees of separation.” In English “maintain separation” means to keep away or be disconnected from something, which is the opposite of the concept of “six degrees,” which is about connection.

It goes without saying that “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon” isn’t a part of any generation’s mindset.

There is no rhyme or reason to claims in the Beloit Mindset List about what college students can and can’t remember, as these items about U.S. Presidents illustrate.

They have known only two presidents. (Class of 2017, #11)

The class of 2017 can’t remember the presidency of Bill Clinton, whose term ended the year they turned six.

Bill Clinton is a senior statesman of whose presidency they have little knowledge. (Class of 2016, #8)

The class of 2016 can’t remember the presidency of Bill Clinton, whose term ended the year they turned seven.

As for the class of 2015, without any memory whatever of George Herbert Walker Bush as president, they came into existence as Bill Clinton came into the presidency. (Class of 2015, introduction)

The class of 2015 can’t remember George H.W. Bush, whose term ended the year they were born, but the Bill Clinton is worth mentioning even though his term ended the year they turned eight.

Potato has always ended in an “e” in New Jersey per vice presidential edict. (Class of 2014, #42)

Dan Quayle’s meaningless spelling mistake is part of the mindset of the Class of 2014 even though it happened the year they were born.

Rock bands have always played at presidential inaugural parties. (Class of 2014, #55)

The class of 2014 can remember Fleetwood Mac playing at Bill Clinton’s inauguration even though it happened the year they turned one-year-old.

Except for the present incumbent, the President has never inhaled. (Class of 2013, #21)

Bill Clinton’s claim that he “didn’t inhale” marijuana is somehow significant to the Class of 2013 even though he said it the year they turned one.

They have known only two presidents. (Class of 2010, #2)

The Class of 2010 can’t remember the presidency of George H.W. Bush, whose term ended the year they turned five.

A Southerner has always been President of the United States. (Class of 2006, #1)

Reagan’s presidency ended in the year the Class of 2006 turned five. So they have had a Southern president since then (assuming Bush I is really a Southerner).

The President has always addressed the nation on the radio on Saturday. (Class 2004, #17)

Reagan re-started this tradition the year the Class of 2004 was born. And members of the class have probably never missed tuning in to hear the weekly addresses.

They have no idea that a “presidential scandal” once meant nothing more than Ronald Reagan taking President Carter’s briefing book in “Debategate.” (Class of 2004, #21)

The Class of 2004 can’t remember “Debategate,” which took place two years before the year of their birth.

They cannot identify the last United States President to throw-up on a Japanese prime minister. (Class of 2003, #35)

While I’m sure this trivial event has no significance for the mindset of anyone, Bush I threw up on the Japanese Prime Minister in 1992, the year members of the Class of 2003 turned 11.

They cannot imagine waiting a generation to get the dirt on the U.S. President. (Class of 2003, #38)

Maybe Messrs. McBride and Nief had something in mind when the composed this item, but I have no idea what it is.

There has only been one Pope. They can only remember one other president. (Class of 2002, #5)

The Class of 2002 can’t remember Ronald Reagan, who was elected the year they were born and served as president until the year they turned nine.

To sum up, according to the Beloit Mindset List, matriculating college students have no memory of U.S. Presidents who served even into the ninth year of their lives, but items of presidential trivia—Dan Quayle’s spelling mishap and Bill Clinton’s remarks about smoking marijuana—are cultural touchstones because they happened around the time the students were born.

The most important premise of the Mindset List is that the significance of events for a class of college students is dependent on the relationship between the purported year of their birth and the year of the event in question. This is a ridiculous premise, but if Messrs. McBride and Nief are going to rely on it, you’d think they’d try to be consistent about it.

Which presidents do college students remember and what significance do they have for them? I don’t know, but neither do Messrs. McBride and Nief.

[In an earlier post, I explained why the Mindset List won’t discuss Obama’s presidency until the Class of 2026’s list.]

Americans and Russians have always cooperated better in orbit than on earth. (Class of 2017, #30)

Russians and Americans have always been living together in space. (Class of 2014, #43)

The U.S. and the Soviets have always been partners in space. (Class of 2006, #22)

Messrs. McBride and Nief are running out of ideas. That’s one of the impressions I get from going through multiple Mindset Lists looking for recurring topics, something most people who have not devoted themselves to the mockery and eventual destruction of the Beloit Mindset List have likely not done.

It should go without saying that Russians and Americans working together in space has nothing to do with the mindset of matriculating college students—because (1) the Apollo-Soyuz Test Project took place nearly 40 years ago and (2) most people just aren’t interested that much in the topic—but since Messrs. McBride and Nief don’t care about accuracy, facts, and such, they really have a lot of freedom to make up interesting and creative stuff. Instead we get the same items repeating every few years.

(Note also that the most recent list had just 60 items—or about one half item a week for each member of the Mindset team—rather than the 75 items that had become the standard.)

Has the task of coming up with several dozen “facts” about college freshmen each year proven so difficult for these two guys that they need to borrow from their previous lists? Or have they simply forgotten what was on their previous lists and are unable to find said lists on the microfilm they use to do their “research”?

The suggestion that the mindset of the Class of 2006 was shaped by knowledge involving citizens of a country that hadn’t existed since they were three-year-olds is just another piece of evidence that Messrs. McBride and Nief really can’t be bothered to get things right.

Having grown up with MP3s and iPods, they never listen to music on the car radio and really have no use for radio at all. (Class of 2016, #15)

They have had to incessantly remind their parents not to refer to their CDs and DVDs as “tapes.” (Class of 2016, #29)

Their parents’ car CD player is soooooo ancient and embarrassing. (Class of 2017, #57)

One of the recent conceits on the Beloit Mindset List is that not only do matriculating college students use newer technology than their parents, but this difference is a source of conflict, confusion and embarrassment.

The item from 2016, suggesting that parents are confused by CDs and DVDs and call them “tapes,” is one of my candidates for dumbest entry in the history of the Mindset List. Compact discs have been around since the 1980s and DVDs since the 1990s. The parents of the Class of 2016 are very familiar with them. And even if they weren’t, why would they call them tapes? Is this supposed to be funny?

The item from the Class 2017 list claims that having a CD player in the family car is embarrassing. As of 2013, there are still new cars with CD players. Cassette tape players weren’t discontinued until 2010 so probably plenty of members of the Class of 2010 have those as well.

You would think that Messrs. Nief & McBride would have done more research on the topic of car audio systems since they actually corrected an item on that topic a year earlier.

Item #15 for the Class of 2016 originally read “Having grown up with MP3s and iPods, they never listen to music on the car radio and really have no use for radio at all.” Critics pointed out that there is actual data that disproves this claim:

The fact is, nearly 90% of all 12-24s in America listen to broadcast radio every week.  That’s documented by Arbitron’s national numbers.  More than 22 million 12-17 year-olds listen to radio every week, while nearly 27 million 18-24s – the “college years” demographic – are still tuning in AM/FM radio even though they have iPods, smartphones, and tablets available to them. (What’s On Your Mind(set)?)

This resulted in Messrs. Nief & McBride changing #15 to read: “While still fans of music on radio, they often listen to it on their laptops or replace it with music downloaded onto their MP3s and iPods.” (The introductory text still reads, “In these students’ lifetimes, with MP3 players and iPods, they seldom listen to the car radio.”)

This correction raises several questions: (1) How many times have items on the Beloit Mindset List been corrected? (2) Why aren’t the Mindset List items that have been proven wrong on Beloit Mindlessness being corrected? (3) Why did the Mindset List duo make up a ridiculous fact about car audio systems just a year after they were caught making up another one?

They aren’t surprised to learn that the position of Top Spook at the CIA is an equal opportunity post. (Class of 2017, #39)

Can someone explain what this one means? My first thought was that around 1995, the CIA must have hired its first woman or non-white director. Thus, the Class of 2017, who must follow such things, would know that the position is an “equal opportunity post.”

However, it appears that every CIA director has been a white man.

The best I can figure is that the item is a reference to John Deutch’s attempt to hire more women and minorities. In 1995, he made Nora Slatkin the CIA’s executive director, which was the #3 position, not the “Top Spook.”

If that’s the case, this item strikes all the regular Mindset List chords: (1) It refers to something that happened around the birth year of the class. (2) The vast majority of the class knows nothing about it. (3) If they knew, most of them wouldn’t care. (4) It clearly isn’t a “touchstone” nor does it have anything to do with the class’s “mindset.” (5) It’s so poorly written that it’s not clear to what exactly it refers.

Planes have never landed at Stapleton Airport in Denver. (Class of 2017, #25)

Once in a while the Mindset List creators don’t even bother to pretend they are chronicling “cultural touchstones” or imparting useful information about incoming college students and just throw in some item that is likely based on some personal memory or inside joke. Maybe one of them or one of their friends used to live Denver. Maybe there is some senile professor at Beloit who gives long incoherent soliliques in class on getting lost in the Stapleton Airport when he was a boy. Maybe Tom McBride had a fruitless day looking at 1995 newspapers on microfiche and added this to the list so he wouldn’t feel like his day was a total loss. Maybe Stapleton is the last name of a girl Ron Nief took to the prom and “landed” is a double entendre.

Nothing is certain except that this item has nothing to do with the alleged purposes of the list and reflects the indifference Messrs. Nief & McBride have toward their audience.