When looking at colleges in the Southeast, there are a number of things one can look for. Whether you’re interested in football or a law school, prestige or scholarships, a college with whatever attributes you desire can always be found. What most people worry over when picking out their college isn’t whether they’ll find a college that fits their criteria, but whether they’ll be able to pick just one.
On the tour offered during the journalism workshop, I noticed that the guide seemed to brush over things like the history of buildings and boy girl ratio, and instead dwelled on the memories and legends of the grounds.
In one of those legends, residents put first a cow, then a car on the roof of the clock tower as pranks against each other, which is now why students aren’t allowed up there.
Another warns that that if the seal in front of Langdon Hall is stepped on, then the culprit shall be eternally cursed with marital loneliness and apathy in his field of study. The only way to break the curse—this, the guide told us with the grave sincerity of a monk—is to fill a bottle with the water from the moss covered fountain where the first football game was played there, and drink it.
He also went out of his way to point out the jewelry store just off the grounds, where his mother’s wedding band was bought.
All of these things, random and whimsical as they are, all point to one attribute of Auburn University that rises far above it’s 3.7 GPA and championship winning football team. Even former students of the University, ones who haven’t set foot on the campus in decades, still nurse a deep hatred for UA and a spirit that’s contagious. When a student commits to Auburn, they’re committing to a family.