I had my interview with an alumnus from Brown today. He stressed that the interview was not that important, and spent most of our time together talking about his experiences at Brown. I listened, but I was diverted a bit by his mode of presentation
He was very tall, but he had too much clothing on for me to tell if he was well built; he was a former baseball/football player. He talked as if there was something immensely painful about life, as if his wife had just died or something.
After he talked about why he had chosen Brown - his family had a lot of kids in it and Brown offered him the best financial aid package - I asked him what he did not like about Brown. He said the place was overly liberal; though at the time he attended he said he was fairly openminded, although now he has become a conservative in reaction to what he encountered there. I wanted to say that I was neither, and in fact hated politics, but he left no gap in the conversation. He talked about how a group of people had stolen newspapers because there was an offensive ad in it, and how the minorities had been polarized - he used the term brainwashed - by people beforehand into distrusting whites.
He said that these experiences did not make him dislike Brown, yet he said everything with such a pain in his voice that it made it sound as if Brown had personally injured him.
At the end of the interview, he asked me if the interview had affected the way I thought about Brown. I said no, but now I realize I had lied: I probably won't attend Brown if I get accepted.