When I arrived on campus this semester, I immediately sensed that something was missing. Hillsdale felt hollower somehow, more homogenous, less varied. It was like sometime during Christmas break, the school had become an inverted version of communist North Korea — everyone on campus wasn’t wearing sterile gray uniforms, but they were wearing equally bleak consumerist ones.
As I wandered around the quid and the quad, I saw again and again the same stagnant outfits hung upon different bodies: girl after girl in leather boots and North Face jackets, and boy after miserable boy in boat shoes and flannel shirts. Where was the life, the color, the variety?
Something had changed. Something was missing. It was a like a warm ray of sunshine had ceased to shine through the window of a dark, damp, termite-eaten house. It was like a vibrant, colorful flower had been plucked from where it grew in the crack of a concrete wasteland.
I longed for the variety and color of Hillsdale’s older days. I longed for bow ties, for ascots, for pink oxford shirts, for birkenstocks worn over argyle socks. I longed for…
Suddenly it hit me: I longed for Garrett Robinson.
Yes, Garrett Robinson! Only last semester his bouncing figure was a common and welcome sight on the quad. He gave this campus character, color, class. And it wasn’t just his candy-cane speckled corduroys; it was also his distinctive character.
Now some of you freshmen are asking yourselves, “Who is Garrett Robinson and why should I care?” Well, you should care because unlike you, who are likely spending your time at college pursuing human affirmation by wearing fashionable clothes and building up your résumés and spending too much time with people of the opposite gender, Garrett Robinson did things because they were right and because they were him.
For instance, while other students of this college mindlessly declared industrial capitalism and the American founding the coming of Holy Zion, Garrett had the courage to defend mercantilism and monarchy from student mockers. While other students relaxed by smoking PallMalls and watching TV shows with titles like “Pregnant in Heels”, Garrett would smoke cavendish tobacco from a pipe while leafing through Jacques Barzun. While other students would pray to Jesus by jumping around to emotive rock-and-roll, Garrett would pray as he saw fit: kneeling in the college chapel and praying from the Common Prayer Book in his deep soothing bass. He was who he was. He was colorful, and he was honest about it.
I remember how Garrett once created his own cocktail. While other students decided to spend their Friday night unimaginatively drinking uncounted shots of cheap Louisiana vodka (hilariously called “Nikolai Vodka”), Garrett created his own drink. He made an unprecedented cocktail by mixing together wine with his vodka. And did Garrett’s wit leave him without a name for his creation? Of course not. He called if “Vine-ka”.
Another story: Once, when some student was — strangely — riding on the college’s tandem bike alone, Garrett decided this lone cyclist needed a friend. As the student sitting in the front seat of the two-seated bicycle peddled his way through the quad’s interweaving sidewalks, Garrett took action. He bolted from under the library colonnade, galloped in pursuit of the tandem bike, caught up with it, jumped on to the back seat, and helped this student pedal away his loneliness.
Truly, Garrett was noble, unique, and unashamed of himself. Some would call him better bred than most of Hillsdale’s student body. And in my opinion, he was. No doubt the envious egalitarians would say he stuck out like a sore thumb. But I say even a unique sore thumb is better than a bunch of identical pale-white thumbs. And besides, Garrett had beautiful thumbs.
Anyway, here’s my point: Hillsdale College claims to fight against the leveling force of socialism — the force that replaces creativity and individuality with gray, sterile uniformity. But look at us today: We are becoming the very thing we condemn! The creeping egalitarian virus has infected even our students. We are losing our variety, our aristocratic elements, our conservatism; we have become uniform slaves to the latest craze.
So for the sake of our college’s future, I plead with the administration: conserve the variety; find a way to bring Garrett Robinson back to us. Maybe the college could give him a job. But please, administration, bring him back soon and stop the present trend toward dull monotony. Our campus needs more gentility on this campus, more color, more ascots. Our campus needs Garrett.
Besides, we miss him.
