I’ve been thinking a lot about brochures lately. I’m thinking of
making my own. The results might be a little obscure to the
untrained eye, but I think it will make sense to seasoned Saint
Louis University students.

I’ve been inspired to do this since spring began to pop up this
year, as hundreds of Technicolor tulips and lush trees spilled into
the landscape. During this season, there are countless stock photos
taken of SLU. They are used for pamphlets, Web shots and other
marketing publications. These images portray beauty, diversity and
happiness on campus, and they do it in a very particular way. Do
you remember the cover of the old phone book? A tall, smiling man
walks with two girls outside of DuBourg Hall, all chuckling as if
they are enjoying a wholesome riddle.

SLU isn’t quite like that. It’s well known that the fantasy
colors of spring (cultivated by a hardworking landscaping crew) are
fleeting. Droves of prospective freshmen and their parents have
gawked at these sights for years, however. And, of course, there is
a certain truth to them. I was staring out the third floor of
Xavier Hall just the other day at a perfectly postcard-worthy
afternoon. But I would pick different images for an authentic
brochure of SLU. And since I rarely take photos (and develop them
less often), I’ll describe the images I would include.

The campus is beautiful throughout the year, but those who live
here know that it can be at its best buried under a few inches of
sleet and snow. In the same way, students show their truest colors
when they’re not dressed for the camera.

Most camaraderie at SLU doesn’t take place at sporting events,
but in niches across campus. Fraternity brothers spend afternoons
in a rotating social hour along the mall. An early fall day
provokes a barbecue in a Grand Forest courtyard where a collection
of people, hotdog buns and beer bottles line up along the railroad
ties. On a summer night at Humphrey’s, people cram into the patio
to scream greetings above the sweet metal sounds of Ivory Tiger.
Others gather on Saturday morning in Griesedieck cafeteria–hung
over, bored or awake after hours of volunteer work. Disheveled,
pajama-clad freshmen gab over their French toast sticks until
noon.

Learning, of course, should be highlighted in the brochure.
Instead of showing students listening in the classroom, however, I
would follow them into the bowels of the Lewis Annex, slaving over
stacks of dusty books. Glimpse through the window of an upstairs
room in the library and find students teaching each
other–scrawling equations across the massive chalkboard. My
English teacher in his quiet, cool office, balancing his baby on
his lap while discussing writing. The lights on in a Griesedieck
window at 4 a.m., or walking by the same room to hear the sound of
clicking keyboards. A teacher frantic to express an idea sketches
amorphous stick figures on the board, perplexing and entertaining
her students.

But because it’s an authentic brochure, it can’t always be
pretty. A young woman sits in the bare room of the SLU Hospital
psych ward, her visiting friends offering her a Dr. Pepper. The
benches outside the halfway house on Lindell Boulevard are full of
smokers, their kids playing on the jungle gym behind them. The man
in a dirty flannel shirt with a cardboard sign appears around the
bend of the Grand Boulevard exit.

We already have plenty of the perfectly angled shots of the
majestic buildings on campus: stock photos of St. Ignatius, his
feet garnished with flowers outside DuBourg Hall, or St. Francis
Xavier College Church lit up with an emerald light.

I’d want to show the city. The well-trod path to the Metrolink
suspends itself on a bridge above the sweep and grind of Highway
40. The gray silhouettes of towers in the Central West End emerging
to the west with blinking lights at dusk. The florescent row of lit
up windows across the gay bars on Vandeventer Avenue.

Such a brochure might not sell SLU to newcomers, but I think
everyone in our community holds similar images in their memories,
and it’s nice to reflect on them as you make your way out.

Krissy Claes, a senior studying English and Spanish, is
editor in chief of The University News.