UCSD later adopted the slogan, “If the shoe fits, you
must commit.”
Photo by: Daniel Clinton
US News has ranked UCSD second among universities that look like a shoe if viewed from a helicopter. This continues UCSD’s legacy of receiving high rankings in troublesome categories, such as its ranking as one of the 10 worst colleges for free speech, and having one of the proportionally smallest undergraduate black population of any college part of University of California system.
Pradeep Khosla, the Chancellor of UCSD, graciously accepted the award and declared UCSD’s commitment to improve their ranking as the second college most similar to a shoe from an aerial view. “I’m hoping that by this time next year we’ll be ranked the best school that looks like a shoe,” Khosla said. “The administration has been considering getting rid of Sixth in order to help our chances and I fully support this decision. It’s not like I’m ever on campus to see a difference.”
This commitment has been called into question by critics of Khosla as he was seen immediately after the ceremony talking to Nike and Adidas executives to get funding for UCSD. “I don’t want to go to class at Croc hall. I have a very small amount of self respect, but I will never stoop to that level. I refuse to invite the devil to my table,” commented undergraduate student Sarah Cipela.
A group of these angered students attempted to hold a protest to keep Big Shoe’s influence out of UCSD. The students planned to have a large group take off their shoes in front of Geisel Library to demonstrate how they “don’t need shoes and neither does UCSD.” Though after receiving 2,000 people interested in the event on Facebook, only 11 people actually showed up. And of the 11 who showed up, only five were willing to take their shoes off, seeing as it had slightly drizzled an hour before the protest.
After the failure of the protest, several students redirected their anger elsewhere. These students believed that UCSD should not have earned such a high ranking. They argue that UCSD looks nothing like a shoe from above. “If anything, UCSD looks like a person in the fetal position if viewed from an aerial view. I don’t know where these big wigs at U.S. News get off, telling me my slightly-worse-than-mediocre college looks like a shoe. I can’t believe we’re only ranked fifth of universities that look like a man crying in the fetal position from above. We should be higher on that list and they know it,” monologued Martin Foetus. Martin then demonstrated the similarities by getting into a fetal position and crying while holding out his phone with a map of UCSD to compare to.
