Dear Frannie,
Over the past few weeks, I have written three iterations of this same letter. I was attempting to master the exact tone and flow of my sentiments, and I’m still not sure if I’m able to say this properly enough to capture the true essence of what I really want to tell you, but here it goes. I hope you understand.
Shut up.
90% of the Vanderbilt student body has had enough of your sudden epiphany of self-righteousness. The other 10% has just refused to read the rest of your printed stereotypes and biases hidden behind ill-constructed and poorly-defended logic.
Since your first Hustler article this year, I’ve received multiple, repeated verbatim requests from a large cross-section of people scattered all across Vanderbilt asking me to “Please write a Slant article about how biased and illogical all of Frannie Boyle’s ‘opinion’ articles are. Somebody needs to put her back in her place.”
So, here I am, appeasing the masses you’ve provoked, exasperated, and infuriated.
Frannie, your articles do nothing but anger our shared readership. Even worse, your articles serve no purpose of fostering any sort of social advancement, which, at least I hope, was your original intent in penning them so judgmentally. By pointing out your personal problems with others and complaining about their immoral behaviors without the coupled offering of a viable solution, you are merely practicing an exercise in futility. Our world doesn’t need another Glenn Beck – especially one who is so hypocritically scrutinizing of our own campus and fellow students. One sensationalist with a media outlet to make wildly inaccurate claims simply for the sake of word-of-mouth publicity, media attention, and campus-wide uproar is more than enough.
After reviewing and researching all of your Hustler articles printed so far this year, I have come to the legitimate conclusion that your arguments are biased, unfounded, and illogical. Moreover, after digging a little deeper beyond what I could easily find on InsideVandy.com – which portrays the reformed side of yourself that you want to present to the public – I also learned of your more scandalous, past exploits. It is not my intent to air your dirty laundry and point out your moral flaws as you have entitled yourself to do to the rest of the student body, but rather, just to remind you that your past did not magically disappear and that it does exist, and can be found, online.
Granted, I realize that you had to get your lascivious act together once that little CNN article hit the internet and the screens of millions of viewers, but stop quoting Bible verses. I don’t consider myself to be a very religious man, but your biblical commandeering just pisses off the people who are actually religious and have been for longer than the past five months. Moreover, it’s pitiful that you need to quote an ancient text for over half of your article just to piss off people enough so that you can mask your inability to form well-thought-out arguments, much less actually defend them with your own logic.
Since I’m sure you don’t actually think about what you write, let me quickly remind you of a few of the following controversial topics you’ve chosen to tackle single-handedly and single-mindedly in your own ill-prepared, cute-as-a-dumb-button manner, as well as provide my simple responses to them:
Profanity
Cee-Lo Green is just better at crafting hooks than you are at hooking up, no matter what the news may say. Moreover, if the musical genius wants to make a quick, couple million dollars by dropping a few F-bombs when narrating his multi-layered and emotionally-relevant heartache, who are we, as poor, unsuccessful college students, to tell him that we’re better than him?
Abortion
First, take a biology course at Vanderbilt. Second, pay attention in it. Third, your high-and-mighty – but entirely inexperienced – opinion may be a bit more “skewed” if you were personally faced with this immensely difficult choice. Some folks actually have to decide between more than Trojan or Durex.
Boozing
Physiologically, most human bodies and brains are done their pubertal development by the time they reach 18 years of age. Beyond that point, responsible drinking has no ill effects on the majority of the population. The problem with underage college students’ drinking excessively and dangerously arises from our nation’s unnecessarily strict drinking-age laws and the resulting need to have to hide our drinking. Just think about it, Frannie, if you had learned how to drink appropriately, moderately, and in a healthy manner and environment as you were growing up, maybe you’d still “be able to remember your first night at Vanderbilt.”
Hooking Up
Oh, sorry, that was just your public confession of salacious, post-raging activities to the Cable News Network. No moralizing message there, just a sense of shame for our university.
Being Christian
Check the “History of Vanderbilt” section linked from the Vanderbilt homepage. “For the first 40 years of its existence, Vanderbilt operated under the auspices of the Methodist Episcopal Church,” so no, Christians did not “start it,” and without some actual statistics beyond a simple canvassing of your own group of self-segregating and self-selecting friends, I am not even sure if you are the majority anymore either. (Oh no, what are you going to do if you actually have to meet and to interact with people who are different from you? The horror!)
Spending Money
Go work the low-wage, long-hour, greasy job of a car mechanic for a year and then come back and tell me how much you can accomplish in the world on the fuels of “passion” and “energy” alone. This should be an especially eye-opening and mouth-shutting experience for you. What America needs now is not simply a monetarily “charitable group of great minds,” but a group of trustworthy and honorable leaders who can guide our country by example and show its citizens what it means to be great, respectable men and women while spending our nation’s money wisely so as to rid her of our desperate reliance on charity and welfare.
Dating
As you sit back and insult us by saying that “Vanderbilt men are the worst….they are noncommittal, arrogant, awkward, and most aren’t even that good looking,” you are only calling attention to yourself and asking to be picked apart for your own failures. Really, it may behoove you to lay low for a while. (Also, yay for generalizations and stereotypes! Haven’t we seen how much social progress they have helped humanity make so far?)
Mature, healthy, successful relationships result from the collective efforts of two mature, independent people coming together mutually to date, seeing redeeming qualities in the other person, and wanting to get to know each other better and more intimately. What part of men stupidly “chasing women” they will never catch and women wistfully waiting for the “chivalrous knight” that will never come sounds logical, mature, and healthy to you?
And as for what respectable Vanderbilt women think of your articles, they concur that you do not comport yourself in a manner representative of them. Otherwise, they have only expressed their vehement desire for you to stop promoting yourself as their collective mouthpiece and that reading your articles induces pangs equivalent to the worst menstrual cramps. Now isn’t that something to be proud of?
Nevertheless, since you’ve always been in the right, I thank you for coming down from the mountain and finally sharing your years of acquired wisdom with us ignorant and sullied plain folk splashing around in the mud of debauchery that you’ve since wiped off your sacred self.
To close, as you once stated in your “Freshmen, have patience with Commons experience” Hustler article, please remember the wisest thing you have ever penned: “It’s unfair for someone like me, who has definitely strayed from the path on more than a few occasions, to tell you what to do.” Thank the lord for granting you that moment of clarity and realize that the more you promulgate your moral conduct admonitions, the bigger a hypocrite you become.
Hot and Sweaty Hook-Up Kisses,
– Justin
To read all of Frannie’s foolish rants in The Hustler and to find the exact article sources of the quotes used above to prove that they are, in fact, not made up, click the link below:
http://www.insidevandy.com/drupal/user/2344/track
To read the CNN article publicizing Frannie’s admission of underage drinking and rampant hooking-up, click the link below:
http://articles.cnn.com/2010-04-19/living/college.anti.hookup.culture_1_hook-sexual-college-students?_s=PM:LIVING
To read the “History of Vanderbilt” article mentioned above, click the link below:
http://www.vanderbilt.edu/about/history/
