Most of the new students entering college this fall were born in 1989. For them, the Berlin Wall barely stood.
These incoming freshmen pose an annual challenge to faculty. While professors get older every year, the freshmen perpetually remain 18. They have their own lingo, frame of reference, cultural icons -- ones that usually much different from their teachers.
The generation gap can lead to misunderstandings. Blank stares. Rolled eyes.
A reference to the Ayatollah Khomeini (who died in 1989, the year many of these new freshmen were born) might need explanation. A mention of Madonna might come off as out-of-touch, not hip.
That has some faculty stepping back each fall, reassessing what they can expect their students to know, and even changing how they present their materials.
"You're dealing with a very small window of real-time knowledge historically," said James Wellman, 49, an assistant professor in the Jackson School of International Studies at the University Washington.
"So you have to remind yourself that they won't know who George H. W. Bush was, or they'll (have) vaguely heard of Reagan. Vietnam is a passing reference that people make. The 1960s were ages ago."
The decades gap is so common that one institution -- Beloit College in Wisconsin -- actually publishes an annual profile of the incoming class and what they may and may not know given their year of birth.
Some students take exception to the Beloit list for the class of 2011. It maintains that these students have never rolled down a car window with their arms. "Oh, I've done that," said 18-year-old UW freshman Kathryn Moffat.
"We are aware," she said, "at least some of us are."
During a recent summer class for new students at the UW, Wellman asked his freshmen students to recall their earliest political memories. The furthest back most could remember? The Oklahoma City bombing. Bill Clinton and Monica Lewinsky. The war in Kosovo. All in the mid- to late 1990s -- just a decade ago.
They were in junior high at the time of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Most wrote their grade-school reports on computers and called high school friends on cell phones.
"I just feel like I've been e-mailing since I could spell," said 18-year-old Kate Mersek.
Some serious historical events are difficult to comprehend.
Crispin Thurlow, a 40-year-old assistant profession in communication at the UW who lived in South Africa during the 1980s, found his younger students don't understand what has happened in that country. Apartheid ended when the incoming freshmen were just months old.
"These young people really don't know what apartheid is, and this is one of the greatest wrongs of the 20th century," he said. "I suddenly have to do a history lesson in order to do my talk."
The gap hits both generations.
When UW English Professor Shawn Wong began teaching more than three decades ago, he was about the same age as his students. Then, the cultural references were easy to get. Now, at the age of 58, he has published books that are older than his students.
During a recent summer lecture on the Medici family, he brought up the 1972 movie "The Godfather." Only three of the 21 students had seen it.
"I've been teaching now for 35 years, and I've long since stopped making cultural references to the '60's," he said in an e-mail, "especially when my students tell me things like, 'You sound just like my dad.' Horrors."
On the other hand, students are hip to subjects that faculty aren't -- technology, fashion, pop culture. Sometimes, professors have to research them.
Medieval history associate professor Theresa Earenfight, 53, and two Seattle University colleagues recently went to the movies to see the teen sex comedy "Superbad" so they would know what their students were watching. It's important to learn the lingo, not so faculty can use it themselves, but so they can understand what students are saying.
Otherwise, Earenfight said, "You have no idea when they say, 'Totally bitchin' class,' if it's a good class or bad class."
Occasionally, though, a professor can school his students.
At the end of one recent class, Wellman asked the freshmen if they've used Twitter, a year-old social networking service that sends friends messages about what you're doing
"What's that?" one replied.
"I know something you guys don't," Wellman said. "That's cool."