Such institutional impersonality would be inconceivable to most American students, except perhaps for part-timers in big urban commuter schools or those at community colleges. Of course, not all U.S. students identify closely with their schools. Some genuinely don't care. For many, however, college days are hallowed with a mystical aura. It all starts with the intense community-building dynamic that goes with the residential system.
Many schools go to great lengths to tie the community bond even tighter.
They create identity dorms, sometimes centered around academics, sometimes not. The schools get the students, most of whom are living away from home for the first time, just when they are forming their concept of self in relation to the greater society and are supremely vulnerable to the lure of a community. On a broader level, consider that a vast number of colleges in the U.S., including Harvard, Yale and Northwestern, were established by religious sects with the primary idea of training youth to become community leaders carrying on the values of their founders. At such institutions the original religious mission has been transmogrified in a secular age into a sense of specialness. Therein lies, for example, the hidden dimension of the controversy over Chief Illiniwek, whose supporters regard the mascot with a worshipful awe that seems utterly perplexing to someone not initiated into the cult.