The First Daughter Becomes First Freshman
In the United States, interest tends to flop mindlessly from one music video to the next in a matter of nanoseconds. It’s the same way with causes. Two weeks ago, we cried “murderers” at the press. This week, we loosen our disdain for reporters and use them to satiate our desire for our next media fascination: Chelsea Clinton.
It seems as though everyone is wondering what the Stanford campus will be like today, when the first daughter arrives here as a freshman. At 17, Chelsea has attracted as much attention for her matriculation route as Scotland has in gaining autonomy.
The editor in chief of the Stanford Daily, where I am a reporter, has fielded calls from every David and Goliath of print media, each hoping for some lead, clue or quote about the first child. “Do you know if she’ll have a roommate?” “Will her Secret Service men go to classes with her?” “Can you find out what she eats for breakfast?”
When the White House announced Chelsea’s decision to attend our school, the campus was swarmed with more camera crews, some professors said, than when Russian President Mikhail Gorbachev visited during the Cold War. The nation even was treated to the knowledge of what flavor smoothie she ordered from our campus Jamba Juice when she visited.
It is the intention of the Daily to treat Chelsea as a normal student once her parents leave and she begins her classes. But that’s going to be a challenge.
Parking lots are being redesigned and streets are being repaved. Perhaps in order to make Stanford more accessible and more aesthetic to the expected surge of visitors?
Every day, rumors trickle among those of us who are on campus early concerning where the first freshman will be living. (Neither she nor any others in the class of 2001 knows this because of Stanford’s policy of not even allowing freshmen to find out who their roommates will be, to avoid prejudgments.) Websites devoted entirely to her future are created and appended daily.
Even as we toss our cries against the paparazzi like Frisbees into the wind, we are all too eager to invade this young woman’s privacy. So let us sate our curiosity the first week of her arrival, when the president and Mrs. Clinton help their daughter move into her new dorm. But when school begins, let us remember that Chelsea is, after all, a 17-year-old girl who would like to be a college student. It is her father, not she, who makes the decisions in Washington. Once she gets settled, let’s hope that Chelsea’s biggest media struggle is where to find her copy of the Stanford Daily.