sic visum superis

I’m afraid I don’t entirely understand the question. I assume you don’t mean something like “why does York exist?” or, if you think York is my name and I’ve wronged you, “why, York, why?!” 

I’ll take a leap of logic and answer why I decided to go to York. And Ill begin my answer, very dramatically, by saying I didn’t. Well, not really.

I go to Glendon, which I consider a completely different school from York, even though it’s technically not. I like to compare it to North America in which Glendon is Canada and the United States is Keele. To outsiders, the two countries are practically indistinguishable and effectively face the world as the United States of Canada. However, ask a Canadian or an American if the countries are the same, and you’ll get an answer ranging from hyperbolic descriptions of complete differences - there’s igloos and Mounties! everyone has a Southern accent and is obese! - to something much more nuanced. In essence, to those in Canada and the United States, there’s an acute awareness of differneces. Outside, there’s not. (The metaphor can go on and on and on - Vikings landed and discovered parts of Canada before the United States; the bilingualism; the population differences; etc.) This is how it works with Glendon/York. The entire culture of Glendon is completely different from that of Keele, and while Glendon is subjected to the York U branding, most students like to make the distinction. So when people ask where I go to university, I never say York, even if outsiders don’t know or don’t care to make a campus distinction.

Glendon was designed to emulate the small, private colleges of the US northeast - Swarthmore, in particular - and to associate it with what is basically the opposite of that at Keele is, well, annoying to say the least. I’m actually of the opinion that Glendon should secede from the union that is York University and focus on its original mission, without the interference of York, which itself has a very different founding mission. I won’t call it a degree factory, but, well… (I don’t begrudge the Keele campus, as much as I complain about it, but it’s just not for me - it’s focused on exceptional growth at the cost of standards, while I think Glendon should embrace its small size and start limiting enrollment, thereby forcing admission averages up.)

I didn’t choose to go to York, really, so much as I chose to go to Glendon. I chose Glendon mostly for its bilingual education, which I’m afraid has mostly failed me (for a variety of complex reasons.) Had I known what I know now, I probably would have gone to U of T like I had originally intended - but on the other hand I would have a much different life. I enrolled at Glendon in English, and only added International Studies as a second major after reading about it and deciding that I loved how it sounded. I’m now applying for grad school in international affairs. That probably wouldn’t have happened had I gone to U of T - I’m fairly sure I would be some beat poet living downtown in a run down apartment with three other poets, just struggling to get by…I also love Glendon’s small size; as much as it can be a burden sometimes, it’s generally quite lovely. 

I’m rambling. But I guess I’ll sum it up by saying “I chose Glendon for its size and its language offerings, and I consider my educational experience so disparate from students at Keele that I almost never say I go to York University. And so, to say that I chose York is wrong.”