I couldn’t resist clicking on “Conde Nest Traveler’s 50 Most Beautiful College Campuses in America” listicle when it came across my Facebook feed and scrolling through the famously beautiful campuses like Amherst, Bryn Mawr, Dartmouth, and Harvard. As I came upon Northwestern in my scrolling down the alphabet I was chuckling at the very notion of my own alma mater ever making a list like this because the northern Ohio town of Oberlin is best known for its flatness, and the lack of natural beauty in the area. At least in my memory of it.
So what a shock to come upon that very campus, which Conde Nest Traveler (who of all publications should know geography, right?) described as “covered in trees” (okay, I guess) and “grassy hillsides.” Which reminded me of the local joke that a dirt pile on the outskirts of town was called Oberlin Mountain because it was indeed the high point.
This had me pondering their criteria. CN Traveler doesn’t tell us, simply referring to their picks as “the 50 best show-stoppers.” No help there.
Now I’m no travel writer and haven’t seen tons of campuses but two of the most beautiful I’ve ever seen were missing from the list – Swarthmore and Cornell.
My other picks for most beautiful campuses – U.Va. and William and Mary – did made the list.
Curious about lists like these, I found a much better one by Architectural Digest, which made no mention of Oberlin and did reveal their criteria: “We’ve gone across the country to find the most beautiful college campuses in the United States, taking into consideration both architectural legacy and setting.”
Also no mention of Oberlin in Cosmo’s list of 50, which keeps its criteria to itself, or in this list of 100, which awards U.Va. the number one spot.
What Makes a Campus Beautiful?
The people behind that list of 100 by Best College Reviews seem to take their lists seriously, and reveal this about the methodology used:
To create this piece, nominations were selected based on 1.) inclusion in dozens of comparable “most beautiful college campuses” list articles, and 2.) an informal survey of friends and colleagues both in and out of academia.
Picturesque natural features such as green spaces, bodies of water and arboretums were the key criteria, as was elegant architecture – and specific buildings and areas were then singled out for their outstanding looks. The ordering was selected simply on the basis of which, as a whole, seemed to be the most beautiful.
Still pretty subjective, but how could it NOT be? Rewarding colleges for their green spaces, bodies of water, arboreta and “elegant architecture” seems about right to me. And I’m pretty sure those things would matter to me if I were choosing a school now, though they clearly weren’t when I was a 17-year-old doing search trips with my mother.
Though I DO remember interviewing at Bucknell in Pennsylvania and noticing its beautiful mountainous setting. But from there we drove westward into the dull, seemingly endless flatlands of Northern Ohio.
Time to Revisit Oberlin?
Being of open mind, it occurred to me that maybe Conde Nest knew something I didn’t know and that Oberlin’s landscape had improved in the decades since I’d seen it. So I watched a tour of the campus and did discover some new gardens and a sizable greenhouse.
And as it happens, I’ve been considering going to my class’s next reunion, at its half-century mark, which will probably be postponed until 2022. I would go back not just to see the campus and the Boomers I hadn’t seen since we were demonstrating against the Vietnam War and rebelling against our parents in every conceivable way. I’d be hoping to rekindle some pride in the old place, after its recent spate of bad publicity.
The publicity resulted from a local bakery’s successful $11 million suit against the college after a dean accused it of being racist, an accusation seen as liberalism gone amok, I suppose. Excessive wokeness, some have called it. George Will wrote that that “Oberlin College has an admirable liberal past and a contemptible progressive present,” calling it now a “disgrace.” Salon asked “Why do conservatives hate Oberlin so much?” based on Breitbart and other media having “long been on the Oberlin hate train.”
So the college I was once proud to be associated with has become a punchline in jokes about liberalism. As we would have said, what a bummer!
How about Your Campus?
Back to the subject at hand, do you have memories of the gardens and landscaping at schools you’ve attended? And did your alma mater make any of those lists?
“Most Beautiful College Campuses” Lists are a Mixed Bag originally appeared on GardenRant on December 4, 2020.
The post “Most Beautiful College Campuses” Lists are a Mixed Bag appeared first on GardenRant.
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