Yes, another vintage university commercial YouTube
I don’t want to turn the main page on the blog to a uploadlog for YouTube-o-vision, but I couldn’t pass over making a note on this.
I don’t think they make university commercials nowadays the way they used to. The O-H-I-O one is pretty good, but I’ve been disappointed with some of the other offerings they’ve had. Gabby and I both agree that the random kids with deep pockets talking about using mommy and daddy’s money to travel the world while still an Ohio State student only came off as pretentious. Like Gabby, I knew one of those people featured on that set of commercials and was kind of appalled that this person was representing the university to any degree, let alone on TV.
The Bunny Clark you see in the commercial is, to my knowledge, still a professor of physics at Ohio State. She joined The Ohio State University in 1981 and, by time she participated in this commercial, she was a full professor in the department of physics. More recently, she attained full emeritus status and even gave the commencement address for students graduating from Ohio State in the winter quarter in 2001. Physics ain’t my bidness, so I don’t pretend to understand anything she researches. I’d have to ask around at my job (or probably better yet, ask my dad) to explain relativistic wave equations.
Uploading this commercial to YouTube is just meant to be a blast from the past for everybody involved, not to embarrass either Dr. McGee or Dr. Clark. As always, because we here all took our education very seriously while at Ohio State, we respectfully thank both Dr. McGee and Dr. Clark for their respective services to The Ohio State University.
Oh, I count 3 Buckstaches in this commercial. Is that tally about right?
- and I think he even gave a speech during my orientation in July 2002. It was either him or Dwight Hudson. [↩]
I love these. Keep them coming.
I’m a huge fan of the recent O-H-I-O commercials and before that, the really confusing technical vernacular about really confusing concepts that no one understands.
i like the O-H-I-O commercials too, but yeah, the “profile” commercials are irritating. i don’t know why, but the one with the girl who’s an engineer bugs me the most. although probably because one of my good friends was a female engineer at OSU, and the last thing she’d want to do is get in the face of people and go FUCK YEAH WOMEN IN ENGINEERING HOW YOU LIKE ME NOW. especially since the engineering college has a quota in regards to the amount of women they accept (that quota being, ‘as many as is humanly possible’).
Heh, as a guy, I can’t speak to the quota in the college of engineering, but I agree that the “profile” commercials get my goat too.
I think my biggest issue with them is that they completely miss the point on what makes The Ohio State University great. By focusing on individual “achievements” (if you want to call using mommy and daddy’s money to study abroad an achievement), those types of university commercials presume that what makes the university great is ultimately reducible to individuals “doing something great”, but that’s not right. What’s great about The Ohio State University is not reducible to the sum of its parts, nor is it any one thing that stands out above all others. It’s everything about the university, but not just the cumulative effect of it. It’s this special “place”, this “thing” that’s hard to really put into words, but we all love so dearly. I think the recent string of university commercials (before the O-H-I-O one) have all tried to push the theme of “Do Something Great”, which is great in principle, but was terrible in execution. Those commercials only come off as catering to a prospective student’s ego when really it should cater to a purpose of selflessness. They even botched the dotting the I commercial by managing to make the guy in question look me-focused. The university commercials need to move beyond “me” to “us”. I think the O-H-I-O commercials perfectly capture that sense of community, and I think the recent 80s commercials I uploaded capture the essence of “the university” as this holistic entity that can’t adequately be quantified. The Ohio State University is bigger than all of us, and I know that’s something I would’ve liked to hear if I was a high school senior looking at colleges.
But alas, I obsess about weird things in life…
Exactly. Because when all things are considered, unless this student in a commercial made global peace possible in our time or invented a new internal combustion engine whereby 200mpg is possible, I could not possibly care who these people are or what they did while at Ohio State. Tell me more about the university than about this kid that kissed enough ass to be featured on a television commercial.
Every 4 hours, i check and see if there is another BKAB. So hungry for knowledge of a buckeye…
Thank you, I am,
Honored to serve this great university I love,
Always,
Oli