Bobb-McCulloch treats all students the same!
Photo: John Meguerian
Rumor: When well-connected freshmen arrive on campus, higher-ups alert CAs to take care of them and make sure they have a good time at school, in an effort to ensure parental donations.
Ever wonder why you’re the only one on your floor to get busted for drinking, while the dude two doors down is single-handedly supporting EV1 through the recession? Turns out, it’s probably not because his parents are famous or rich.
A former Bobb-McCulloch CA told us, vaguely, that kids with rich parents received special treatment in the dorms. In retrospect, it was probably vague because it wasn’t true. Attempts to contact her at her new school and stalk her on Facebook were met with silence. (Only one CA clammed up when we approached him—a certain CA on Chet Hanks’ floor in Willard Allison declined to comment, citing confidentiality agreements.)
But it looks like all the intrigue was for naught. Former Elder CA Ben Parr said that in two years, he was never asked to ‘go easy’ on a student with well-connected parents. “I mean, you’ll single out people if they’ve been troublemakers, and you’ll listen at their door a little longer on rounds,” Parr said. “There was never singling out of anybody because of their family.” Current CAs echoed this response, including a drunk Bobb CA who was definitely not in a state to lie.
Representatives from the Departments of Residential Life, Alumni Relations, and Office of Weinberg’s Dean not only denied the rumor, they didn’t even take a defensive stance against it. Dean of Students Burgie Howard says “all Northwestern students are treated equally, and we hope they all feel special.” Then, after apparently realizing how cheesy that sounded, he laughs. “Just because the student’s family has a well-known last name or donated a fair amount of money to the university, we don’t change our practice.”
But if a student is high profile enough to have security concerns, Howard admits the university would make sure to address them. “If one of the Obama daughters decided to come to NU, we’d make sure we took precautions and alerted the people that need to know.”
To make sure we’d thoroughly debunked this myth, we tracked down some current mini-celebs to see if they’d reaped any benefits from special treatment. James Gallagher, actor Peter Gallagher’s son, says that he and his friends were written up twice during his time at Allison. “When one of us got in trouble, we all did. We never got out of anything.”
Gabe Cohen, the son of Meredith Vieira, has barely even spoken with his CA this year. “She either doesn’t know or doesn’t care. I don’t think my parents are high-profile enough. Obviously, Chet Hanks gets attention from everyone on campus, but I’m not nearly that noticed.”
With the manner of someone who does indeed get too much attention, Hanks declined to comment on this article. Then he hung up on us.
“Well, it’s tough being Chet,” says Gallagher. “He’s a real good guy. Don’t hold it against him.”
Alright, at the very least, we won’t glare if he escapes a CA write up—that’s probably just luck. Or so we think…
Status: Debunked.
Update: When we wrote that Chet lives in Willard, and we talked to his CA, we meant his CA in Allison. Oops indeed! Thanks to whimsical commenter “fact check.”
chet hanks lives in allison, not willard. oops.
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