Spring Break
Renzi Teaches College 101 Using Only His 'C's
Chelsea Weiss
Issue date: 9/8/05 Section: Focus
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"I wanted to see somebody famous," said Chantal Thompson, a 1st-semester economics major. "To our age group he is almost as famous as anybody."
A nine year veteran of the reality television industry, Renzi discussed more realistic topics ranging from owning a credit card to fending off chlamydia.
Renzi dismissed common inspirational phrases such as "just be yourself" and "you'll find your place" to make it through college. He narrowed down all pertinent information to living in collegiate cohabitation to words that began with the letter C.
As a freshman at Rutgers University, a politically correct, left wing college, according to Renzi, Sexual Awareness Week resulted in a campus wide effort to not only accept a gay neighbor, but to make him your best friend. Renzi believes this adherence to political correctness falls far from the truth.
"The glory of being American is that you can be as racist as you want," Renzi said. "You do not teach people by telling them what to do or think- you let them think on their own." Harping on his first C, culture, scrawled across a poster board, Renzi stepped back to squeal, "Like, I have props, how cool is that?"
According to Renzi, we all have prejudices and no one has the ability to be completely impartial to everyone.
"I will always judge people with mullets," he said.
His tone of speech turned serious, reminiscent of his on-screen battles with Flora or Veronica of "Real World."
"When political correctness is shoved down your throat, you're going to avoid a subject completely," Renzi said.
Culture will push a freshman toward protesting against "every subject imaginable," but you're allowed to make up your own mind about how you want to feel or speak, he said.
Learning from experience, Renzi advised students not to run from the cops. Arrested for evading police on a celebratory jaunt to roast marshmallows at Rutgers, he learned "rent-a-cops are real cops," and suggested freshmen realize the same.
Renzi inhaled a deep, theatrical breath, before detailing what he describes as one of the most important aspects of young life - credit. Having single-handedly ruined his own credit and paying for his sophomore year on MasterCard after his parents found out he was gay, Renzi detailed the advertisements for credit cards as a vicious predator. He outlined that college students should only be allowed one credit card, which he learned when he processed credit applications in Kansas City.