Wesleyan University prides itself for being an accepting and diverse campus. Walking down High Street, you’ll see people of all different ethnicities and socioeconomic backgrounds. This is one of Wesleyan’s most attractive qualities, as most private colleges are ethnically and socioeconomically monotonous. In theory, the kind of diversity seen at Wesleyan should translate into ideological and social diversity, and allow for all walks of life to come together, share their experiences and learn from each other, creating cohesion of culture. However, despite the attempt to bring together different cultures and social groups on campus, it would seem that, for the most part, the general campus has distinctly ostracized one group of students. Both male athletes and members of those fraternities associated with male athletes—DKE and Beta—seem to be labeled as preps or jocks. Their role in the campus social dynamic is often belittled, and their part in making Wesleyan diverse seems to be completely ignored.
Take, for example, these posts on the Anonymous Confession Board. One post, entitled “Beta,” told the members of Beta that “your windows will continue to be broken until you begin to respect the campus and the people on it. You guys are not only the most insecure people on campus but also the least intelligent.” There was a post entitled “fuck you beta, love wes,” which claimed that the function of Beta on campus was simply to give students a “taste of what state school frats are like.” In a post with the title “Frat Boys,” the poster asked which fraternity brothers were the most dateable, only to receive this response: “DKE frat boys are by far the most dateable. All you have to do is enter the house and you will be on a ’date’ whether or not you want to be.” And in a thread about the most hated freshman, a poster justified his hate for a freshman boy by describing him as a “stereotypical jock idiot with no redeeming qualities or traits.” Many students at Wesleyan have negative feelings to the athletic and fraternity culture here and it is often based on gross overgeneralizations and projected negative qualities. A lot of Wesleyan students seem to think the behavior of the fraternities, specifically Beta, are inappropriate. However, a lot of students seem to forget that the world is not as politically correct as the Wesleyan bubble, and that their behavior isn’t really that bad compared to the behavior of brothers in fraternities at larger schools. I’ve visited friends at UMass Amherst and have met some of the brothers there, and I know for a fact that the behavior of Beta would seem angelic compared to the ridiculous stuff the fraternities at Massachusetts’ flagship state school get away with.
I’m not even sure that these frats and those male students who fit Wesleyan’s definition of the ’jock’ or ’prep’ stereotype deserve the reputations they have been given. If anything, their poor perception on campus stems from their retaliation against the prejudice they are subjected to on this campus for being seen as part of the greater social hegemony. I’ve met many people who seem to think that normative students, by which I mean students who are generally stereotyped into groups seen as socially mainstream or hegemonic like preps and jocks, are somehow inherently less intelligent and less interesting than the typical socially liberal students at Wesleyan. It is perceived that the choice to conform to hegemonic culture by wearing socially normative clothes and participating in socially normative activities, like sports, suggests that these people do not have the intellectual capacity to have opinions of their own, and that they follow the crowd, doing whatever they feel is normal. This is an obnoxious generalization that promotes a feeling of social elitism among those who believe that because they are socially liberal that they have escaped a mindless mainstream existence. The simple fact that people are using things such as clothing and participation in sports as indicators of intelligence and personality says more about the people making those judgments than it says about the people being judged.
Wesleyan students need to stop belittling those who they perceive to be part of the socially normative population on campus. Many upperclassman have been voicing concerns that Wesleyan is becoming a bland, faceless school as the entering classes become more “normal.” Just because someone plays a sport and wears clothes deemed to align with prep or jock stereotypes doesn’t mean they don’t have interests outside of their sports and don’t contribute to the cultural and intellectual diversity on campus. I know a lot of the guys on the wrestling team and, believe it or not, they have interests outside of wrestling, and they don’t all involve chasing females and drinking beer; some of their interests are even academic. Being an athlete does not force someone into an existence dominated by stereotypical ’jock’ interests. Hipsters, hippies and artists alike constantly want to be seen as more than a simple stereotype, and I think that athletes deserve that same liberty.
To be completely honest, a lot of the athletes here represent the liberal arts pedigree much more so than the socially liberal students. Students who embrace all spheres of life, including science, art, humanities, music and athletics: those are the students who exemplify what it means to be a liberal student. I’m happy that there are athletes on campus because they represent, to me, the idea that a student should try to succeed in all areas of life, and their presence is a constant motivation that if they can juggle athletics with academia, I can too.
So the next time you complain about all the stupid jocks and frat boys who don’t care about their work in your chemistry class, think twice; they might actually be doing better than you are.
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