The Fine Line Campus Tour Guides Walk—Backwards
The clouds are playing matador defense on the sun when I get to the Washington, D.C., campus of Georgetown University in mid-July. They stunt at shading my already sweaty neck before retreating and allowing the sun to beat down once again. Walking into the Edward B. Bunn, S. J. Intercultural Center is a respite. There, seated and smiling behind a white pop-up table, I meet Jaydon Skinner—one of the university’s famous Blue and Gray tour guides.
In 40 minutes, Jaydon will lead a group of prospective students and their parents around campus. The group will bend around historic buildings, as Jaydon tells stories about the time he encountered former President Bill Clinton—“My tours have the presidential seal of approval,” he’ll say—and the school’s 2017 hire of a Hall of Fame NBA star and Georgetown alum, Patrick Ewing, as head basketball coach. But first, the nearly 200 people signed up for the tour will be crammed into a small, wood-paneled auditorium for an information session with Bruce Chamberlin, a senior admissions director at the university.
The group gathered here on this muggy Thursday is partaking in what, for some families, is a rite of passage: the summer college tour. No one would like to buy a home sight unseen, so why would families want to enter into a four-year-or-more deal with a sticker price of upwards of $200,000 without first seeing exactly what they were getting? Campus acceptance rate each year, every iota of information could help.
