Keller @ Large: Welcome Out-Of-State College Students

BOSTON (CBS) - I'm sure I speak for all lifelong residents of the Boston area when I say welcome, a warm welcome back to the out-of-state students now descending on our community like locusts, but not the bad kind of locusts, understand.

The good kind.

The kind with lots of disposable income.

No rank-out intended kids, we really do love to see you returning this time each year. The colleges and universities are a key engine of our economy, and it's your willingness to meet their obscene tuition demands that keeps the engine oiled up.

Plus, so many of you come here for school, fall in love with our homespun friendliness, and choose to stay on afterwards, starting your businesses here, raising your families here, and electing only Democrats.

We wouldn't be the way we are today without your defining presence, so again, welcome, please spend freely!

But while we're embracing you, now that your parents have left you here and headed home to ponder their new financial predicament, let me add some fatherly advice of my own about enjoying the easiest possible assimilation into Bostonian culture.

You will have a ball here if you just do what we tell you to do at all times. This includes parking, jaywalking, noise making, dispersing from a crowd, and so on.

Treat our front yards as you would treat your own - if quiet and cleanliness were being enforced in your front yard by ISIS.

Enjoy your new home-away-from-home, but respect its traditions. Don't expect traffic etiquette to be practiced, or strangers to say "good morning" even if you were the last person on earth.

And whatever you do, kids, leave the Yankee hat back at the dorm.

That was your only warning.

Listen to Jon's commentary:

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