A Used Purse Is Front Page News?

As I was waiting to meet with my students this morning, I was leafing through The Boston Globe. Imagine my surprise when Wheaton College was mentioned on the front page - because a girl there has a REAL Louis Vuitton purse. And not only that, but she is renting it. "Last month I had a Chanel," she brags.

Oh. My. God.

For all the amazing things Wheaton and its students have done, we are on the front page of one of the most widely circulated papers in the nation for THIS? Because some freshman chick thinks it's important to carry around a bag with a big price tag to feel special?

I almost spit out my tea across the classroom. I would expect something like this at Dartmouth (although here, everyone is rich enough to actually OWN the bag), but my sweet old Wheaton? And it's not like this was even on the "Style" front page, or "Living Arts." No, no, no. It was on the freaking FRONT PAGE, right next to important things like the thousands of people who died in the Pakistani earthquake and the fact that our next Supreme Court judge might help the conservative conspiracy illegalize abortion! Obviously, this is important journalism. What next?

I don't know who to be more disappointed with, The Boston Globe or Wheaton.