Twice Mice

Oct 01 2008

Bow down to Washington

Posted by: Lydia in Seattle, USA, tags: North America, Seattle, USA

At the beginning of 2007, if someone had asked me where I would most like to live in the world, I would have said California. A land full of sunshine, shopping, Apple keynotes, determined cheer squads, and inspiring vampire-slaying heroines. What more could I want? It turns out, I would also like to live in a land with carbon awareness, civil liberties, minimal poverty, adequate education, compassionate immigration laws, bountiful public transport, human rights, health-care, foreign policy, stable banks, and an intelligent and progressive government. That land is not the bizarre, arrogant, and insular USA.

We experienced an extreme of this culture on Saturday night, when we attended our first and only American sporting event – the university football game. The 70 000 seat Husky stadium dominates the campus, and it was at around 80% capacity when we arrived. The Huskies are ranked 118 out of the 119 college football teams, and they have yet to win a game all season. Yet, around 55 000 people came out to see them, paying anything from $16 to $127 to join in the event. Even more strangely, as we walked through the parking lot, we saw people sitting under purple and gold marquees, watching the game on television right outside the stadium.

Due to new stricter criteria, football players for the University of Washington now must meet the same admission and grading requirements as the rest of the student body. They must keep a relatively high grade-point average throughout the semester, and are removed from the team if they fail too many courses. Thus, the ranking of the team has plummeted because the players are now spending more time on their subsidised education at one of the best public universities in the USA. Naturally, fans are outraged at these new requirements. Yet somehow, the whole audience was convinced that the Huskies were the best team in the world, and cussed at the referees for every penalty that was given to the home team. We left at half-time in disgust, and caught a bus home with a freshman dressed head-to-toe in Husky purple, who declared that she wished that she had never come to UW, and that she had gone to a place with a better football team so that she could be proud of her university.

At half-time, 3000 students from high school marching bands around Washington gathered to play the Husky theme song “Bow down to Washington”. It was quite a spectacle.

The time has come to leave “the greatest nation in the world” and to find a home that is more in line with our values and our ideals. Next month, we will be spending three months in Australia, before starting our new home in Leuven, Belgium.