Taking a college visit to Auburn University

It’s spring break, which means I just took one of my children to visit another college campus.

You may recall that last year I took my oldest son, Robert, to visit Georgia Tech, a place where ambitious young people walk briskly to their next class, and where every building, lawn and gathering place has been carefully designed to create an environment conducive to solving nearly impossible equations, impressing international employers and landing a six-figure job by the time you’re 22.

For example, our tour guide, who had a 4.0 GPA and had just landed a job with a major oil company, explained the existence of the student recreation center by citing statistics proving that habitual, strenuous physical activity increases brainpower.

At the end of the tour, I asked Robert what he thought. He’d been planning to attend Tech since he was in first grade, and personally, I still liked the idea of him becoming highly employable and self-supporting.

“Nobody was throwing a Frisbee to a dog,” he said.

“What does that even mean?” I said.

“It means I want to visit Georgia Southern,” he said.

So he went with his neighbor to visit Statesboro, where kids were indeed throwing Frisbees to dogs and lounging in hammocks and doing a variety of other leisure activities.

Robert graduates from high school in May, and he still hasn’t decided on a college. This week, just for kicks, we crossed the river and visited Auburn.

He wanted to get a feel for the campus. I wanted to know two things:

▪ Is there any way for Columbus residents to get in-state tuition to Auburn?

▪ Is Auburn really the freakish cult that it appears to be?

First, I spent enough time in the admissions office Wednesday morning to now fully understand that — with apologies to the New Testament — it really is easier for a camel to pass through the eye of a needle than for Auburn to waive out-of-state tuition for anybody, regardless of how many millimeters that person happens to live from the Alabama line.

And second, yes, Auburn is really the freakish cult that it appears to be.

Auburn people actually do greet each other with “War Eagle!” and say things like “I believe in Auburn and love it!”

Auburn people do worry about stepping on the seal engraved in the sidewalk before they’ve completed their coursework, because doing so means they won’t graduate in four years — unless they bathe in the fountain outside the president’s home.

As our tour guide pointed out, bathing in the fountain outside the president’s home is felony trespassing, but “sometimes you’ve got to do what you’ve got to do.”

Also, if you kiss your girlfriend or boyfriend at midnight next to the piece of vintage mechanical machinery at the entrance of campus and the giant wheel in the machinery does not move, then you are guaranteed a long life with that person.

(By the way, the wheel is set in concrete and won’t move no matter what, so you’re stuck with that person, which isn’t bad because everybody at Auburn is beautiful and wonderful.)

We also took an elevator to the top of Haley Center so we could behold the football stadium and gaze upon college football’s largest video scoreboard, on which our tour guide once played Madden.

This was our 60-minute impression of Auburn. Curiously absent was any mention of all the successful non-athletes who received their education on the Plains, including the CEO of Apple and a whole galaxy of astronauts.

But no matter. Auburn is a special place, just like any school is special when the students there decide to make it so.

This story was originally published March 25, 2016 at 4:24 PM with the headline "Taking a college visit to Auburn University."