Wednesday, December 19, 2007

Three Cheers for Ugly!

My alma mater, UC San Diego, got named #13 on a list of America's Ugliest Colleges by someone who can't spell "architecture." Err...ok.

The main architectural problem facing UCSD is its age. It's young - it was only founded in 1960. So there are no cool old buildings like you'll find at Berkeley or any of the Ivy Leagues. And the buildings it does have are all aggressively modern, which I can appreciate even if some of them at downright weird.

And, um, our library (left), - named for Theodore Geisel, AKA Dr. Seuss - looks like a fucking spaceship and is surrounded by little canyons, which I may or may not have hit golf balls into on several occasions. Also, in the picture on the left, you'll see a winding path. That's the snake path. The snake has a head. Yeah. UCSD has the market cornered on subtle, weird art installations.

And we have the Sun God (right), which looks like a psychedelic chicken. The Sun God Festival is held in the spring of each year. It's one day where everyone gets drunk and horny, skips class and actually sees the sun rather than just studying, crying, and taking caffeine pills all the time.

Maybe UCSD isn't pretty, but it's quirky. And it's right near the beach!

3 comments:

drwende said...

The term for UC San Diego is "vulgar vitality," which is exactly what a Southern California university ought to have.

The term for the person who made that list is "beneficiary of SERIOUS grade inflation in freshman English course."

Anonymous said...

Um, is the chicken standing on top of a vagina?

Mella DP said...

Interesting list, though at a minimum they missed Stonybrook, and Northeastern isn't ugly, just very dull. And I feel compelled to defend Ithaca College, which, as a Cornell alumn, I don't think I've experienced before. Cornell as a whole is beyond stunning, but our Engineering college (which would be my corner of campus, sigh), is infinitely uglier than IC.