By Samuel Dutschmann | Copy Editor
Many students fall in love with their college town. Longhorns adore Austin, Aggies love College Station and University of North Texas students are wed to Denton. Yet, Waco garners an unfair and immense disdain from its student citizens. It’s time for Baylor students to realize the great heritage they’ve inherited in Waco.
Whether students like it or not, a college town is a second hometown. It changes your character akin to the place of your upbringing. Its venues carry your formative years. Its people will be in your bridal party, at your child’s baptism, nourishing your faith in its churches — your college town will change you.
Baylor students do not realize the treasure they’re given. They confine their lives to the shriveled bubble of campus, the Grease Pit and the occasional trip to a coffee shop. As a result, they speak ill of Waco with their false impression of sparse opportunity for exploration.
This plague even troubles the pages of our beloved paper. In 2021, The Baylor Lariat published an opinion arguing that “Waco serves Tex-Mex, not true Mexican,” citing Fuego and Torchy’s Tacos as failing excuses for authentic Mexican. The writer finished the article with yearning to “see more genuine cantinas and taco stands establish themselves in Waco” — a statement bleating with the spirit of the Baylor bubble. As any Waco-immersed student knows, as this rightfully disgruntled alumnus wrote, our beautiful berg has a booming Mexican-American community with no shortage of authenticity.
The issue isn’t limited to a single column, but rather the column correctly expresses the spirit of our campus. Our student body is ungrateful toward the community that bears us, and it’s entirely our fault.
In my years at Baylor, I’ve heard a near constant onslaught against Wacoans, the town’s amenities and our city’s peaceful way of life. While this may find its root in a variety of biases, the foremost of them is willful ignorance.
Seeking diverse experiences, even our most free-wheeling students merely turn to Austin Avenue and the tidiest stretch of Franklin Avenue downtown — traveling a whopping 1 mile away from campus. If this were all Waco had to offer, then it would be understandable for students to grow weary of the same venues played on repeat for four years.
Lucky for us, Waco is an iceberg of experience. Baylor students only remain ungrateful for our unrealized treasure. This ignorance is curable.
Look to the Wacoans — those who opt to build their lives here. They know the social flora and fauna, and they’re eager to share with those who will appreciate it.
For instance, almost every Wacoan holds fond memories of the annual Heart of Texas Fair and Rodeo, an event largely absented by Baylor students. For those willing to delve beyond the inauthenticity of Fuego and Torchy’s, ask Waco natives what their favorite Mexican restaurant picks are. It’s unlikely that anything in the Baylor bubble will be on the list.
Lastly, and one of my favorites, is West’s yearly Westfest, which celebrates the town’s foundational Czech heritage. Learn to polka, eat a klobasnek and partake in the same pride West natives feel for their hometown. This is only the lightest skim — let Waco and the area shape you as it has shaped its natives.
With this, I offer one caveat: Wacoans are more than willing to share with those who are open to appreciation. While the student body’s current disposition is largely one of ingratitude, ignorance and apprehension toward anything beyond the Baylor bubble, we can easily leave these vices as relics of the past.
It’s time to pop the bubble, ditch the collective apprehension of spending time in “real” Waco and be open to Waco’s offerings.
