Reply to Is "Public Ivy" really a thing?

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[quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous][quote=Anonymous]I would argue that Ivy League isn't as much of a thing as it used to be. It's simply a shorthand term for top colleges. I have known educated people who didn't know that Stanford and MIT weren't Ivy League. For all practical purposes, I would say that these two schools are more "Ivy League" than schools like Dartmouth and Brown in which the general public is less familiar with. [/quote]

It is exactly as it always has been - a sports conference.

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Oh stop with that stupid "it's only a sports conference" thing -- you even disagree with it in your second sentence.

Words have meanings beyond the literal.  Something is what people understand it to mean, and if you think when someone says "Ivy League" the first thing they think of is sports then you are deluded.

I'm not saying Ivy League schools are better than any other schools, but let's retire useless canards and discuss reality like adults.[/quote]

You are mixing up posters.

Connotations are not "real". The only "real" thing is a group of 8 colleges/universities that form a sports conference. There are no public university equivalents of that organization.

People can use those terms to mean different things, but they aren't "real". 
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You are right, I mixed up posters.  Sorry about that.

But you are wrong about what is "real" -- you don't get to decide what things mean.  And the fact is that when you say "Ivy League" to most people, they do not think you are referring to sports.

Do you dispute that?[/quote]

It's not "really a thing" just like public ivies are not "really a thing".

Just because people believe in Santa Claus doesn't make him real.  :lol: 
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Your logic does not compute.  We are discussing what a phrase means, not whether mythical creatures physically exist.

The phrase means something to most people in popular culture.  That's where the argument ends.  The canard "The Ivy League is a sports conference" is true, but "The Ivy League is [i]just [/i]a sports conference" (or its equal, "It is exactly as it always has been - a sports conference") is not.[/quote]

The fact that people perceive that "Ivy League" means something [i]more[/i] than a sports conference doesn't actually make it more than a sports conference. Similarly, the fact that people perceive that "Public Ivy" means something doesn't make it more than a writer's attempt to sell books. Perception is not reality. It's a lot of things, but not "real".

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