There are two different ways that Tour Guides engage in the art of deception. The first is unintentional deception, e.g. they will give a statistic or description of some facet of the College that they think is right but is not. “Students live in Unity House” and “People never run out of printing money” are two examples I heard recently. This is more often something that new Tour Guides (like myself) do when put on the spot by an abrasive question or when they feel some sort of inexperience-based anxiety. Compared to the other two ways we bend the truth, these instances are more so a series of semantic mistakes rather than anything actively deceitful. On my first tour, my athletics-related statistics were dripping with errors. And, because families are bombarded with so many facts, stats, opinions and anecdotes, one little slip-up here and there is more likely than not to have consequences of a negligible order.
The other way that Tour Guides inaccurately represent our college is through straight up lying, in the willingly-saying-something-about-the-College-that-we-know-is-not-true-in-order-to-present-it-in-the-best-possible-light sense of the word. The good news is that these lies are never, to my knowledge, handed to us by Admissions in the form of numbers and statistics. Our stats and general facts about the College that we memorize and rattle off are rock solid, and in no way aim to bend the truth. An example of how this happens elsewhere is at a college of a similar size with Greek life, where Tour Guides are told to tell their tours that 30% of the student body takes part in Greek life. What they don’t say is that pledges can’t join until sophomore year, and that 70% of non-freshmen participate in Greek life. This is a willful, not to mention cunning, choice on behalf of the Admissions Office at this particular school, and again, to my knowledge, none of the stats about Conn given to us by Admissions are manipulated.
When I talk about the food at Conn, which we can all agree has its ups and downs, I say that it’s “good, and sometimes even excellent.” By not saying that it can be bad (Harris codfish and old lettuce from JA can really throw a wrench in our digestive tracts, no?), I’m lying. Although the food can be good, and sometimes can even be excellent (Soup and Bread, the Festivus Roast, and some of the Harris Sandwich specials have brought us a lot of happiness over the past four years), I’m still lying. I lie because to do otherwise would conflict with the primary goal of our Admissions office (and every Admissions Office in the country), which is to get as many people to apply to the school as possible.
When I give my “Everyone at Conn understands the importance of the Honor Code” spiel, same deal. Every Tour Guide does this in one way or another, and we have enough impressive statistics and factoids (free music lessons, 9:1 student/faculty ratio, equal distribution of all four classes in non-specialty housing, unlimited meal swipes for everyone living in a dorm, etc.) to complement instances where the information is relayed via personal opinions that are not grounded in evidence.
Again, I cannot stress enough that Admissions really handles any potential dishonesty with the utmost integrity. Rather than go the route of other colleges and give inaccurate statistics, they encourage us to do one of the things we should be learning how to do at Conn in the first place, and that is to communicate ideas with clarity by synthesizing the objective and the subjective. This sort of rhetorical strategy is to be found in almost any real-world situation, where so often success depends on someone fashioning a veil, an illusion of sorts or a stretching of the truth. I’ve asked my superiors how to handle talking about the less-than-perfect aspects of being a Camel, and they are guilty of nothing more than encouraging me to “stay positive.” A good Tour Guide will read between the lines on that one, but at the same time I’ve never felt like I was being pressured to lie by a superior.
Much of the “sugar-coating” comes from what we don’t say, rather than what we do say. For instance, so many people are attracted to Connecticut College because of our flagship interdisciplinary centers, and it gives me great pleasure to talk about how the centers are a unique opportunity to both sharpen our academic focuses and broaden what’s possible for an undergraduate student to accomplish. What I don’t say is that the Ammerman Center for Arts and Technology has had a 50% retention rate amongst its senior class and that the CISLA sophomore seminar often breeds circular, static discourse because of the relatively enormous number of students it admits. Although the former, a fact, and the latter, a subjective opinion, would offer a balanced look at the centers, I don’t tell either to tours because it would make the College look bad. We also omit things like Fishbowl (or used to, RIP), detailed descriptions of Floralia and Cro Dances and things like how much free alcohol the College gives (or doesn’t give) to the senior class, simply because parents tend to be anxious enough about losing their child and don’t need to get any ideas planted in their heads about said child turning into a debaucherous alcoholic who on occasion gets naked in public (private-college-bubble public, but nevertheless).
Why then, as students of an Honor Code school that values truthfulness and integrity above all else, are we comfortable engaging in this type of behavior?
First, the good at Conn College unequivocally outweighs the bad, and any lie cannot even begin to obscure what this school has to offer. Limitless are the opportunities for students to get involved with so many different parts of this machine, to make decisions and take actions that author the future of the College, to choose from a hugely diverse range of academic and social environments. We are more or less free to do anything we want, and free to constructively (or unconstructively) criticize what we cannot do. We are an institution that every day rises to new levels of ambitiousness, of prestige and of reputability, and the coming of President Bergeron, our increasing commitment to sustainability, the Academic Resource Center, our all-Steinway status, our fresh-off-the-presses 3-D printer and all other things new and exciting do nothing but augment Conn’s momentum. While we cannot deny our imperfections, our college was founded precisely because a group of women were dissatisfied and worked together to solve the problem of getting an education. The need to constantly improve and to never cease striving for betterment is at the core of our essence and our heritage, and without the imperfect this train ride of progress would come to a screeching halt.
The second reason is that tours are arguably the most efficient way to attract an increasingly strong and increasingly large body of applicants, which in turn will ensure that the quality of our student body accelerates in parallel with that of our resources. The strongest applicants—kids who are intelligent, outgoing, ambitious, virtuous and high-spirited—are going to be critical of all tours they attend, and to give a great tour means to be confident, fluid and sincere, but also positive. Through a few minor exaggerations, omissions and even fewer good old-fashioned fibs, we Tour Guides can engage in a process that has limitless potential to ensure the sustainability and growth of student bodies for generations to come. •
