Questions about the Class of 2018 Beloit Mindset List

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Professor Angry and I have mixed feelings about tomorrow’s expected release of the Beloit Class of 2018 Mindset List. On the one hand, we’ll get to start debunking another poorly researched and written list of trivia unconvincingly connected to incoming  college freshman. On the other hand, since our goal is to destroy the Beloit Mindset List, its continued existence is a painful failure.

We already know a few things about the new list. It won’t be funny. It will have little to do with the “mindset” of new college students. Here are a few questions about the new list that we’ll learn the answers to tomorrow.

1. Will the list be as error-ridden as previous lists? As I examine items from past lists, I continue to be amazed at how many easily checked errors they contain. It would seemingly be simple for Messrs. McBride and Nief to hire a couple of student fact-checkers to check their work. However, if they have any interest in accuracy, they’ve kept it well hidden.

2. How will media respond to the list? If last year is any indication, fewer media outlets are publishing the Mindset List uncritically and more are critiquing it or mocking it. This is a trend I hope continues. In the age of Buzzfeed, the Mindset list is just one of countless pointless listicles floating around the Internet. What sets it apart is its academic pedigree and unwarranted attention from the media. While not as satisfying as complete destruction of the list, having it mostly ignored would be a well-deserved fate.

3. Will the list change at all? The Mindset List for years has contained familiar tropes and tics. The meaning of words change. People are shaped by the events that took place in the year of their birth. Things that happened over 18 years ago never happened. Do Messrs. McBride and Nief have any new ideas? Probably not.

We expect two more posts here before the new Mindset List is released: (1) an essay on how the Mindset List could actually be improved (if it continues to survive destruction) and (2) Prof. Angry’s and my Class of 2018 Beloit Mindlessness List, which like the Mindset List itself, is just a bunch of made-up stuff.

#38 in a Series Examining Every Item on the Beloit Mindset List

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Threatening to shut down the government during Federal budget negotiations has always been an anticipated tactic. (Class of 2017, #17)

Growing up with the family dog, one of them has worn an electronic collar, while the other has toted an electronic lifeline. (Class of 2017, #18)

The Mindset List web site used to claim that it started as “a witty [sic] way of saying to faculty colleagues ‘watch your references.’” The line may be insulting to professors, but its meaning is clear.

In the past year or so, the line has been changed to “a witty way of saying to faculty colleagues ‘beware of hardening of the references.’” Huh?

The creators of the BML are an English professor and a P.R. flak so you’d think they would be able to write comprehensible English rather than the tortured, convoluted prose they regularly turn out. Since apparently nobody at Beloit College has stepped forward to edit the lists before they’re published, Professor Angry and I would be happy to lend our services. For my audition, I’ll rewrite the two choice Class of 2017 items above.

  • “The threat of a government shutdown has always hung over Federal budget negotiations”
  • “Their dogs wear electronic collars; they carry electronic lifelines.”

Accuracy is harder to fix.

Messrs. McBride and Nief like items that connect something that happened around the birth of the class to something that happened recently. Republicans in Congress shut down the government in 1994 and again in 2013—so it didn’t happen for first 18 years the Class of 2017 was alive. Since it’s a tactic used by Republicans against Democratic presidents, it wasn’t even anticipated for most of their lives.

Electronic shock collars for animals have been around since the 1960s so it’s unclear why it shows up on the Class of 2017 list—or how many Class of 2017 pets wear them given the controversy that surrounds their use.

College students being “connected” has been in the news for years, e.g., the Pew Research Center’s informative 2010 report “Millennials: Confident. Connected. Open to Change,” so I suppose it was just a matter of time before the BML stumbled upon it, connected it to a more questionable assertion and turned it into a poorly constructed sentence.

#37 in a Series Examining Every Item on the Beloit Mindset List

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Jurassic Park has always had rides and snack bars, not free-range triceratops and velociraptors. (Class of 2017, #26)

Here’s another example of a “words develop new meanings” item that makes little sense.

Jurassic Park is a 1990 novel by Michael Crichton. A Steven Spielberg movie of the same name was released in 1993. A sequel to the book, The Lost World, was published in 1995, the year when much of the Class of 2017 was born. That book became a movie in 1997. A third movie came out in 2001. A 3D version of the first movie was re-released in 2013 and a fourth movie is planned for 2015.

Jurassic Park: The Ride at Universal Studios Hollywood opened in 1996 with other versions opening later in Japan, Florida and Singapore.

There have also been Jurassic Park comic books, video games and toys.

There are two obvious directions for the BML to take regarding Jurassic Park. First, Jurassic Park has always existed for the Class of 2017 (since they can’t remember a time when it didn’t exist). Second, Jurassic Park never existed (or at least is not important) for the Class of 2017 (since it came out while they were babies).

As evidence that either approach would work, we can look just one year back when the Class of 2016 list used one approach for The Santa Clause and another for Pulp Fiction even though both movies were released during the same year:

There has always been a Santa Clause. (Class of 2016, #53)
Pulp Fiction’s meal of a “Royale with Cheese” and an “Amos and Andy milkshake” has little or no resonance with them. (Class of 2016, #69)

(See more about this contradiction here.)

Instead, the BML goes in a third direction, suggesting that the Class of 2017 can recall the ride but not the premise of the movie or book, i.e., “Jurassic Park“ has a new meaning.

Ron Nief, one half of the Beloit Mindset List brain trust, is a Beloit College P.R. guy so it’s bizarre that this item seems drafted by someone with a complete misunderstanding of how marketing works. Jurassic Park is a media franchise with multiple products that increase awareness of each other. You might as well claim that “Beloit College is ‘a poorly written compendium of trivia, stereotypes and lazy generalizations,’ not an institution of higher education.”

#36 in a Series Examining Every Item on the Beloit Mindset List

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As kids they may well have seen Chicken Run but probably never got chicken pox. (Class of 2017, #7)

In their first 18 years, they have watched the rise and fall of Tiger Woods and Alex Rodriguez. (Class of 2017, #33)

The Celestine Prophecy has always been bringing forth a new age of spiritual insights. (Class of 2017, #37)

Being selected by Oprah’s Book Club has always read “success.” (Class of 2017, #55)

They have always known that there are “five hundred, twenty five thousand, six hundred minutes” in a year. (Class of 2017, #60)

Barring a miracle, the Class of 2018 Mindset List will be released sometime next month. When we are closer to that regrettable occasion, I plan on posting a list of ideas for making the List somewhat less worthless than it is now. Here’s one idea now:

Instead of making up what movies college freshmen like, what celebrities they care about, what books they’ve read and so on, Messrs. McBride and Nief could ask some of them—send out a survey to incoming Beloit College students and ask them about their favorite stuff.

The Celestine Prophecy, published two years before the Class of 2017 was born, is likely less significant to understanding their mindset than whatever books they would report being their favorite, most influential or most read.

Does the Class of 2017 know about or care about Tiger Woods, Alex Rodriguez or Oprah Winfrey? Ask them who their favorite celebrities are.

Have they seen Chicken Run? Maybe, but I’d rather hear about what their favorite movies are.

Do they know the lyrics of a love song from the musical Rent, which was released when they were in diapers? Do they know the songs from any musicals? Ask them.

I’d actually be interested in the favorite books, movies, celebrities and whatnot of entering college students, even if the information was based only on Beloit students—far more than in the made-up stuff now featured on the Mindset List.

#35 in a Series Examining Every Item on the Beloit Mindset List

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Eminem and LL Cool J could show up at parents’ weekend. (Class of 2017, #1)

When this item was published, Eminem’s oldest daughter was starting her senior year in high school. If she attends college immediately after high school, she would be in the Class of 2018.

I don’t know the college plans of LL Cool J’s daughter and I suspect that Messrs. McBride and Nief have no idea either.

I haven’t reviewed all of the “celebrity’s kids go to college” items, but the Class of 2016’s  was completely wrong.

If anyone at Beloit College is reading this, please get these guys a student intern who can fact check simple stuff like which celebrity’s kids are entering college this year.

#34 in a Series Examining Every Item on the Beloit Mindset List

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Captain Janeway has always taken the USS Voyager where no woman or man has ever gone before. (Class of 2017, #22)

Bill Maher has always been politically incorrect. (Class of 2017, #59)

How hard could it be to figure out what T.V. shows were the most popular for a birth cohort? Nielsen collects this sort of data. Naturally, the Beloit Mindset List instead just names a couple shows that premiered around the year the cohort was born.

Star Trek: Voyager (starring Kate Mulgrew as Kathryn Janeway) was cancelled in 2001, when the Class of 2017 was six years old. Politically Incorrect (hosted by Bill Maher) was cancelled in 2002, when the Class of 2017 was seven. (It premiered in 1993, when the Class of 2015 was born, but maybe Messrs. McBride and Nief were running out of Class of 2017 material and had to dig into their old notes.)

Shows cancelled before your parents let you watch them aren’t part of your “mindset.”

#33 in a Series Examining Every Item on the Beloit Mindset List

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Washington, D.C., tour buses have never been able to drive in front of the White House. (Class of 2017, #54)

This item is a clear example of the Mindset List’s 9-11 Problem:

The Beloit Mindset List has never made a direct reference to the terrorist attacks on Sept. 11, 2001. Or the subsequent wars in Afghanistan or Iraq. Or the rise in security procedures or any other policy changes that took place after the attacks.

But how could it? These events happened in the past 12 years and the central premise of the Mindset List is that the mindset of a birth cohort—its set of “cultural touchstones”—is concocted from events that took place the year its members were born.…

9-11 and its aftermath must be more significant for understanding the “mindset” of American young people than roughly 99% of the trivia on the Mindset lists, but the Mindset Method dictates that they can’t be directly referenced.

Indirect references are okay as long as they are connected to something that happened roughly 18 years earlier.

The section of Pennsylvania Avenue in front of the White House was closed in 1995 after the Oklahoma City bombing. It’s a tiny bit of anti-terrorism security in one city, insignificant compared to all the security theater that followed 9-11 and shaped the lives of the Class of 2017, but it happened 18 years ago and that is what really matters.

#32 in a Series Examining Every Item on the Beloit Mindset List

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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.

#31 in a Series Examining Every Item on the Beloit Mindset List

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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.]

 

#30 in a Series Examining Every Item on the Beloit Mindset List

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Astronauts have always spent well over a year in a single space flight. (Class of 2016, #72)

A bit of the late Gene Roddenberry, creator of Star Trek, has always existed in space. (Class of 2016, #40)

The Hubble Space Telescope has always been eavesdropping on the heavens. (Class of 2012, #54)

The space program has never really caught their attention except in disasters. (Class of 2011, #56)

Travel to space has always been accomplished in reusable spacecraft.  (Class of 2003, #22)

They are too young to remember the Space Shuttle Challenger blowing up. (Class of 2002, #8)

I’m going to wrap up Astronaut Week here at Beloit Mindlessness a day early because Prof. Angry and I will be hosting a space-travel themed party in the Mindlessness office suite all day Friday. Drop by anytime. Costumes are recommended but not required.

I have half a dozen space-themed items left to cover in this post, but I want to start with the punchline to this week’s exploration of space through the alien minds of Messrs. McBride and Nief: Despite regularly including trivia about space travel in their lists of “cultural touchstones,” in 2007 the pair admitted that space travel “has never really caught the attention” of matriculating college students!

They did give “disasters” as an exception, but the only time a space disaster (the Challenger explosion) was mentioned on a Beloit Mindset List was to explain that the Class of 2002 is too young to remember it!

Regarding the other items, none of which have “caught the attention” of college students:

• The space flight that lasted “well over a year” (437 days) was in 1994, the official BML birth year of the Class of 2016. This is one of those “happened the year they were born but never since” items that show up frequently on the lists.

• The spacecraft carrying Gene Roddenberry’s ashes fell out orbit and disintegrated into the atmosphere in 2002, when the Class of 2016 was eight-years-old—so it hasn’t “always existed in space.”

• The Hubble Space Telescope was indeed was launched the year the Class of 2012 was born.

• The first space shuttle operational flights (presumably the “reusable spacecraft”) took place in 1982, when Class of 2003 was one-year-old.