Play 50: Makes Me Wonder

CHARACTERS
VINCENT, 17

(He stands in the middle of the stage facing the audience.)

VINCENT
You know, it’s really odd when you think of why things are how they are sometimes. (beat.) For example, someone was telling me earlier today about how colleges and other schools in general have this focus on the “well-rounded” student, you know, like one who doesn’t just get good grades but is good athletically or stuff like that. The funny thing is it didn’t used to be that way at all. So, in the early 1900s the Ivy League schools were really anti-Semitic and tried to keep Jews out—trust me, this has a point, it’ll connect to what I was saying in a bit. So anyways, to keep Jew out the started to use quotas, so like only five percent of the students could be Jewish. The eventually people found out about all this and the colleges got in trouble and had to change all that.
(Pause.)
But they still didn’t want to let Jews in, so they came up with this idea of the “well rounded student” to try to create the same effect—that is, to have less Jews be admitted cause if the did it on grades alone like 40 percent of the of the students would be Jewish.
(Beat.)
Apparently that’s why they came up with the SATs too—they wanted a test on WASPy knowledge so they’d do better. That backfired though cause Jews still did well on the SATs so it didn’t really work as they had planned at all.
(pause.)
But, just what I’m trying to say is isn’t it weird to think that even something as random as schools focusing on not just letting people in because of grades was originally created out of anti-Semitism?
(beat.)
I don’t know about you, but sometimes stuff like that just makes me think of how much I don’t know at all about why almost anything is why it is in our society.
(pause.)
Just makes me wonder how much else I don’t know.

(Fade out.)