Interesting theory – I like the unreliable witness concept – but not the really case here. The post you are quoting from was in April 2016 right after the accepted student night when my son was still picking a school and I was concerned he had over-indexed on the bad experience and I was asking people on the Midd forum for alternative perspectives. It was before I had set him up with the recent grad I mentioned above for the purpose of trying to diversity the range of experiences he heard from, when in fact the grad unfortunately only strengthen the impression and sealed my son’s decision to move on from Midd for his choice.
I simply didn’t realize in that post yet that “NARP” was a known thing outside of that unique subculture, which is why I generalized it to “normal” (in quotes). After the meeting with the recent grad when he truly was saying he was final not to go to Midd, we pressed for a lot more detail and it was referenced more. This would have been after that first post. You can see me referencing the term with our Midd experience going back many years if you cared to search my posts, so it’s not a selective memory thing.
I actually still have very strong memories of that trip. There’s lots of details I left out. The room he stayed at had members of the baseball team. The a room of their dorm suite was setup with a permanent ping pong table for beer pong. Loved that Midd had unlimited meals (at the time, no idea if that’s still true). I had a very positive experience with the parent portion of the events. Still vividly remember finding the building where the band was rehearsing for his sit in with them, and touring the impressive athletic facility. And I loved hanging for a while in the library with the awesome huge picture window with the view.
As I noted above in my first post, I kids can find their “tribe” or “people” at any of these schools. It mattered more to him than some, which was the thesis of the old post you quoted at the time. But the NARP vibe isn’t a selective memory – it was his selective experience at the time.
I’ve hesitated to weigh in since my son, who’s an athlete, doesn’t go to a NESCAC school. I asked him about the NARP issue, and yes, he had heard the term used. He goes to Washington and Lee, where something like 75% of kids go Greek. The benefit of this percentage is that everyone and anyone can join a fraternity/sorority (unlike what was described above). And, since the fraternities are a mix of athletes/nonathletes it helps erase that divide.
I cant tell if the williams article is a parody or not? The person writing it is so unimpressed by athlete culture that it seems to imply that the “NARPs” couldnt care less about the athletes. So maybe the term exists at other schools, but do people care about it at other schools?
The Williams article strikes me as real. What’s important in that article IMO is that the writer (a self described NARP) says they have athletic friends, and the writer does go to athletic events. So seems like there’s not an athletic/non-athletic ‘divide’ for the writer. The writer didn’t address campus social life though, which is where we hear on CC (and elsewhere) the divide is prominent, for example, non-athletes can’t go to athlete parties.
My D, an athlete, is at a NESCAC where that term is used, but AFAIK even tho the athletic teams have parties and mixers with other teams and such, said parties open up to anyone at some point in the evening. The non-athletes attend athletic events at this school to root their team on.
My S is an athlete at a midwest LAC, where I haven’t heard that term used, but there is very low support from the non-athlete students at athletic events, which is sad. He has also said he feels (so n of 1) that some/many non-athlete students seem to have no interest in getting to know him.
That was the impression that we had visiting Williams, that so many kids were involved in sports, but also in music and so many other things, that there was no real divide. Sad to hear that this exists at other small schools where sports are a big part of the school.
As the parent of a NESCAC athlete, I want to say that not all athletes want to exclude non-athletes. His situation is that he is with his teammates every single day for the whole school year for four hours a day (his sport is a three season sport). That includes morning lifts, afternoon runs and meetings, and dinner. It’s virtually impossible for his teammates to not be his best friends since they share a love of running and are together so much. School is hard and most of his other time is spent in class or studying. He has friends in his classes and some have “stuck” - especially those in his majors who he sees often over each semester. He might have lunch with them or study with them but usually does not socialize on weekends with them. Doesn’t mean he doesn’t appreciate them as friends or thinks less of them because they aren’t athletes.
My point is that, on campuses that are small with a large percentage of athletes, it’s just the nature of the beast for the social lives to be at least a little bit divided. Boyfriends and girlfriends of athletes are almost always invited to any socializing done by teams. Early on, freshman roommates of athletes likely aren’t invited to the athletes’ parties since a freshman athlete isn’t really in the position to bring friends to an upperclassman athlete’s party. Later on, though, non-athlete friends (at least at Bowdoin) show up at athlete parties.
That’s a pretty old article from Colgate’s Maroon News and, really, just one kids’ opinion. Our D knows that the athletes there are smart and have outside interests. Certainly at Bowdoin they do.
I’ve never heard either of our kids use NARP. I don’t think athletes are entitled at either school. I don’t even know what that would mean in this context. And the social divide mostly happens because, like I said above, the teams spend so much time together that they become a friend group and don’t have a lot of time to meet kids outside of all of their practice and game time. It’s not always nefarious.
The Colby one is almost a decade old too. I think your point, @homerdog , is on target though. College athletes, even lowly D3 ones (ha!), spend so much time at their sport that it can’t help but create a group that others are not a part of. The real question isn’t whether others are intentionally excluded, but how much this impacts community life.
This is also one of the reasons many athletes quit before they are seniors - there’s a life going on at school that is inaccessible to them while they have their athletic commitments.
As a parent of a daughter likely to apply ED to Bowdoin or Williams, I’m curious as to whether your daughter made her choice! Midd was at the top of my daughter’s list for a while but their aid isn’t as generous and there was a bit more of a preppy vibe there when visiting…
