When there’s something you dislike, the last thing you want is to be reminded of it, over and over and over. In an environment where people tend to have a bit of trouble reading social cues (and you probably have a bit of trouble giving them those cues), it can be even worse.
Bathing was often an issue at Rose. Students who tend to be geeky, less socially-adjusted, and stressed don’t put as high of a priority on hygiene.
Sometimes I didn’t plan speech balloons too well.
Fantasy races are kind of preposterous when you think about them. There’s the short people, the pretty people, and the people who are dragons. Of course, Brynne must know about elves and dwarves and such; you don’t become Wiccan or major in Black Magic without a healthy childhood obsession with fantasy literature. Let’s just assume she’s screwing with Cassie here.
Rose-Hulman’s first co-ed class of freshmen enrolled in 1995. Sexism was as rampant as it was on many campuses; girls were evidently only there to get married, or maybe the school used different standards for women, or she must be sleeping with the professor because she can’t be that smart. It was perhaps worse that most of these things were said jokingly. Few men seriously accused women of being lesser students, but the jokes and remarks were incessant and pervasive.
On the occasion of the 10-year anniversary celebration of this event, the Flipside was co-ed themed. In addition to cartooning, I edited the Flipside, the humor page of the Thorn. I had the difficult job that issue of making jokes about coeducation and sexism without the jokes themselves being sexist. Every issue had a Top Ten List, always full of ridiculous or satirical items. That issue’s was the “Top Ten Reasons Coeducation Was a Bad Idea.” It was intended to satirize the ridiculous arguments against coeducation and included items like “Women always getting pregnant, menstruating” or “Female upper-body strength insufficient to carry bookbags.” We got a letter to the editor about that one.
