(This article, reprinted with permission, featuring Ben Kassoy, class of 2007, appeared in The Columbus Dispatch on June 19, 2008)  7/1/08

Random thoughts
College men reflect town, not gown

By Ben Kassoy

Around this time last year, Pomp and Circumstance chorused endlessly as the sun beat down on identically gowned graduates.

A year later, I'm thinking maybe it wasn't the temperature that had us ready to tear off the academic regalia but rather the chance to exchange our uniformity for a distinctive style influenced by the college experiences to come.

Returning from Emory University and reuniting with the guys, even I -- not exactly a fashionista -- recognized the change.

One friend, a freshman at New York University, seemed to be standard Justin: sleek blond hair, ecstatic laugh and conservative partisanship.

Then I spotted his laceless-and-loud Ed Hardy slip-ons, flames and skulls screaming from the tattooed canvas.

"If you wore those shoes in Tuscaloosa, you'd get your butt kicked," said Brady, returned from the University of Alabama.

His transformation, on the other hand, hadn't stopped at footwear.

Yes, there were boat shoes but also a pink polo shirt and sunglasses on a strap worn backward, giving him the effect of having eyes in the back of his head.

Another one of the guys, a quarterback at Tufts, returned with a buzzed head and triceps obviously inspired by Jumbo, the Massachusetts university's elephant mascot. And my friend from the University of Kentucky should have brought a fiddle to accompany his newfound bluegrass accent.

I was disappointed at my Ohio State buddy's "Block O" T-shirt; I half-expected him to show up in a Tressel sweater vest.

Have we all come back as collegiate conformists, walking stereotypes?

No, I quickly decided, more like cultural sponges.

We've each done our respective version of browsing the Met in New York, pledging a fraternity in Tuscaloosa or cannonballing into Mirror Lake.

We each have friends whose phone numbers start with unfamiliar area codes and lifestyles as polar as NYU and 'Bama -- not to mention clothes that belong on opposite sides of the Mason-Dixon Line.

And yet, we're all sharing the summer back home, where clothes, along with memories, still make the man.

"Dude, remember how hot those gowns were at graduation?"

Ben Kassoy, of Bexley, recently completed his freshman year at Emory University in Atlanta.
 

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