One of many postcard-worthy views of campus. Photo by Lilah Raptopoulos.
For me there is no better place to enjoy autumn—my favorite season—than right here at Conn. And I was glad to have shared the campus’ beauty with a few people through some postcards I bought from a table at Harvestfest. I picked out the ones depicting various familiar sights on campus surrounded by trees ablaze with fall color and sent them as the season waned.
But these were a rare find since there are no postcards for sale at Conn. It has always bothered me that something so commonplace in every college bookstore is glaringly absent from ours, especially on a campus like ours, which has a potential postcard-perfect shot at almost every turn.
With the various communication options available to us today, it is pretty obvious that the traditional, snail-mail method of getting in touch is virtually obsolete, except maybe around holidays. Yet at almost every tourist trap, local or national monument and college bookstore in the country one is almost guaranteed to find a spinning rack of glossy 4×6” cards with a picture on one side and a blank space to scribble your thoughts on the other.
To me, the fact that these little guys have survived in spite of all the options modern communication offers says a lot about their place in our memories. It says that even though people can get in touch more quickly in more transient ways, deep down they still have the sentimental capacity to linger and appreciate something solely for the thought that was put into it and not its efficiency. There is something so valuable about something from a loved one that you can physically hold and appreciate: the brief thoughts of the sender on one side and a picture on the other, depicting something memorable or beautiful. Surely everyone has received at least one postcard in their life that they have appreciated.
Unlike texts or e-mails that get deleted or archived, people tend to hold on to postcards. Letters are nice, but unlike postcards, which are just assumed to be a simple gesture, they come across as requiring a bit too much effort these days. When it comes to getting in touch informally, the old-fashioned way, postcards are the answer. They’re a more straightforward, visual memento—something that can be kept for a long time and rediscovered down the line in the bottom of a drawer or stowed away in a box somewhere.
To find them missing from the bookstore was disappointing.
But before I continue my petition for postcards in the bookstore, I should confess that I made a slight omission when I said that there were no postcards at Conn. There is actually one offering, which is great except for one problem: no one buys them. To find out why, just go there for yourself and ask where the postcard rack is. You’ll be asked what in the world a “postcard rack” is (where do you think you are, Times Square?), then cordially directed to the expensive gifts table, where you’ll find a neat stack of one variety of postcard. Brushing off the thin layer of dust should reveal a breathtakingly boring shot of the back of Fanning, taken at an extremely wide angle to include the guardhouse and a sign (before that small stone wall was erected) at the Mohegan Avenue entrance engraved with the college’s name.
I can’t help but question the aesthetic tastes of the person who chose to print and try to sell over a thousand copies of this picture as a way of representing our school. Have they seen Conn? Have they ever been around campus at sunset after a fresh snowfall? Have they ever taken a walk in the Arboretum in the peak of autumn? Have they ever looked south across Tempel Green from the sundial at night and seen the checkered golden lights of south campus against the dark backdrop of Long Island Sound? I am almost certain that every student here has been rendered speechless by a sight of beauty on this campus and felt something that was hard to describe in words, perhaps requiring a picture to convey the feeling.
The bookstore is usually very good about taking students’ requests. They even keep a notebook to take down suggestions for when they make orders from suppliers. When I asked if they could order some new postcards, the woman told me that they first had to sell all the ones currently in stock, to which I probably said something to the effect of, “You mean that one?” She affirmed my doubts and, ignoring the obvious flaws in this logic, I pointed out that they weren’t selling at all—meaning no postcards for Conn in the foreseeable future.
At this point the woman stopped pretending to be nice to me. Maybe I came across as obnoxious, but as the naïve, curious freshman I was, I received some serious negative vibes. I realize that an argument like this one may seem less than legitimate. It comes down to whether or not one values having postcards at Conn. If the answer is yes, then an argument has to be made. In any case, I believe that postcards that actually portray the beauty of our campus are important to have, if not as a bare necessity then definitely as a welcome addition. •
