<p>And as a private individual you have that right, even at schools like Oberlin. </p>
<p>However, you don’t have the right to extend that in the form of a campus club/organization which employs the same exclusivity at Oberlin or colleges with similar rules…especially if you meet on campus/use campus resources or are an officer of such clubs/organizations. Once you form a campus club/organization, they must be open to all students who are interested in joining as members or to attend hosted social events. </p>
<p>Contrary to Bay’s assertions, this is a distinction with a crucial difference.</p>
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<p>FYI, no one at Oberlin had an issue with those who didn’t care for grunge music. </p>
<p>I speak from firsthand experience as someone who didn’t really care for it during his undergrad years. I preferred more high tempo pop-punk bands like Offspring and Green Day. While they weren’t popular among most classmates…they didn’t pay it too much heed and certainly didn’t sneer at me for my “common tastes” as some folks on other campuses/areas of my life have. Considering some of the sneerers’ own musical tastes…their sneering was ROTFLOL worthy.</p>
<p>As for clothing, the only issues is if you were exhibiting attitudes of a judgmental fashionista or wore formal corporate wear like suits every day to class unless you were a con student…as they were required to do so for academic events like student recitals.</p>
<p>Yes, we get Oberlin’s rules. No one is arguing that Oberlin doesn’t have those rules.</p>
<p>But if the Oberlin social culture is indeed what you say – with significant disdain for / mocking of others who aren’t in your circle – then it seems to be just as oppressive, if not more, than wealthy-kid clubs. After all, it seems you guys bond over making fun of other people. Few wealthy-kid clubs are organized over making fun of non-wealthy kids.</p>
<p>It is funny that we’re having this discussion with reference to a lot of schools that reject thousands of kids each year, but I think what cobrat is promoting is an ideal of egalitarianism once you get in. That’s appealing to a lot of people–it was something that mattered to my daughter, and was one thing that made her dislike Princeton. I have the same reaction to colleges that have different housing options with big differences in cost–I don’t like it, and I’m glad that all the housing costs the same at my kids’ college. I don’t think this preference for egalitarianism is necessarily inconsistent with meritocracy–I think the best players should get into the orchestra, for example.</p>
<p>I don’t see what’s so superior about being a judgmental non-fashionista than being a judgmental fashionista. </p>
<p>I met a friend of my son’s last week at a Fourth of July parade. We were all marching for a political figure that my son is doing an internship with. My son and I were in shorts, sneakers and a t-shirt with this politician’s name – as were most of us in the parade. My son’s friend used to be in the armed services, and he showed up for the parade in a buttondown shirt, tie, khakis and dress shoes. It took me aback for a second – but then I shrugged and moved on, and enjoyed my time meeting with and chatting with him and hearing about his experiences. Sounds like I’m less judgmental than your Oberlin friends who would, apparently, have “mocked” him for wearing more formal dress. So much for your liberalness.</p>
<p>Most of that can be much more easily ignored or in the case of those like myself…laughed off.</p>
<p>However, the same can’t be said for exclusive social clubs, especially if they affect the campus community negatively at small liberal arts colleges or similarly sized universities. </p>
<p>Not only will the campus community be deprived of the participation in campus life from those who choose to socially exclude themselves from everyone else on campus, this very exclusionary policies of the club also adds a divisive and sometimes even toxic element to campus community life. Especially on a small campus with less than 5000 students.</p>
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<p>My reading of the dislike for students wearing formal corporate wear every day to class is mainly to do with their feeling the need to preserve a casual environment as most feel they’ll be mandated by professional norms to wear such clothes for the rest of their working lives from the moment they graduate. </p>
<p>Granted, there’s also a strong political element to this as well as most classmates don’t want to wear something that’s strongly associated with big business/large corporations in their minds unless they absolutely have to to make a living during summers/upon graduation. </p>
<p>Con students are not included in this dislike as everyone on campus understands they are required to do so for academic reasons. </p>
<p>A reason why it’s easy to pick out Con students, especially during recital periods…they’re the ones wearing suits/formal corporate wear. :)</p>
<p>Sounds kind of like gay marriage – if you don’t want one, don’t have one. Why is it necessary for them to insist that others do things their way? Talk about judgmental and oppressive. “I don’t want to wear conservative business dress, so I’m going to mock or make fun of those who do.” Good grief, why not just leave people alone? </p>
<p>It’s not the girls in Lilly Pulitzer who are being judgmental here, cobrat. You are depicting Oberlin as Judgments About Others on Steroids, with lots of social pressure to conform.</p>
<p>This definitely was the case at Princeton back in the not-so-distant past when most of the eating clubs were selective (“bicker”) and there was a sharp status stratification even among the clubs, and especially between clubs and “independents.” Most of the students on FA were “independents” because they couldn’t afford club membership fees and the cost of fancy clothes for club events–not to mention the fact that, lacking the social connections that the most exclusive clubs used as criteria for membership, the clubs didn’t want them anyway. Princeton attacked this head-on by increasing FA to reflect the cost of eating club membership fees. That, coupled with a number of the clubs dropping “bicker” in favor of a “sign-in” policy in response to persistent student criticism of the bicker system, the closure of several clubs, and a concerted effort on the part of the university to expand and make more attractive on-campus residential and dining options for upperclassmen, has somewhat eased social stratification at Princeton, but it still exists to some extent.</p>
<p>When social stratification is as dominant a part of campus life as the Princeton eating club/bicker system once was, it’s not so easily ignored by those who are excluded. Which is why, as far back as Woodrow Wilson’s presidency of Princeton in the early 20th century, the university has taken measures to counter what it perceived to be the pernicious effects of the bicker system. Wilson described the lot of those excluded from the selective eating clubs as “a little less than deplorable,” and he fought, unsuccessfully, to tame the clubs by bringing them under university supervision and gradually transforming them into residential quads. The clubs went over Wilson’s head to the trustees and Wilson’s plan was rejected, but the university did begin to make significant investments in residential and dining alternatives for undergraduates, and freshman and sophomore eating clubs were abolished.</p>
<p>I think it’s a little Pollyannish to say, “Well, just turn a blind eye to all this and be your own person.” Sometimes you can, sometimes you can’t; it depends on how central the exclusionary institutions are to campus life. There will always be a tendency toward clique-ishness and social exclusion on the part of some students, and it’s not always around SES issues. Often it takes pretty harmless forms. But if it’s as deeply institutionalized and as pervasive a part of the campus culture as the selective eating club/bicker system once was at Princeton, there’s just no getting around it. Even in those bad old days, many "independents’ at Princeton had a fine undergraduate experience, but for others the exclusion was hurtful because they felt cut off from what many generations of Princetonians regarded as the quintessence of the Princeton undergraduate experience.</p>
<p>True. But it’s also a little hypocritical to say that the way to counteract people who you FEAR might be snotty / judgmental (even if they haven’t yet demonstrated it) is to be ACTIVELY snotty / judgmental towards them from the get-go.</p>
<p>Wondering if anyone has read Walter Kirn’s memoir of attending Princeton in the 1980’s. He describes sharing a suite with these really wealthy guys his freshman year, and they went out and bought furniture – including a leather couch and an oriental rug – which they then placed in the common area. They then instructed him that he could not use the furniture, since he couldn’t come up with his “share” of the cost of the common room furnishings (something like seven hundred dollars, as I recall). Yes, I guess he could have decided that they had their own life, and that it didn’t matter to him – but it still seems nasty and cruel and probably something the administration should have looked into. . . He definitely perceives it as being sent a message that “yes, we took you for diversity reasons and all, but you will never really be one of us.” Nice. Classy.</p>
<p>Well, I take Kirn’s story with a grain of salt. Here’s an excerpt, which doesn’t quite match up to the Oriental rug story: [The</a> Night I Joined the Upper Class - The Daily Beast](<a href=“The Night I Joined the Upper Class”>The Night I Joined the Upper Class)
I think he’s overstating things a bit for effect.</p>
<p>Ha! I have a friend who went to Princeton around that period and hated his experience there for similar reasons to the extent he ended up identifying much more with his graduate institution…MIT. </p>
<p>His strong identification with MIT where he got his grad degrees…including a PhD in a STEM field was such that even his close friends assumed he went there for undergrad as well as grad school. When his younger sister randomly brought out the fact he went to Princeton for undergrad, we were all surprised and he looked as if his sister revealed a shameful secret he’d wished she had not blurted out.</p>
<p>Yes, that story is nasty and cruel and non-defensible.
Certainly, however, you see a difference between suitemates telling another suitemate that hecan’t sit on the couch – and the mere existence of a social club elsewhere on campus that doesn’t impact anyone who isn’t in it. I’m sorry Wellesley societies impacted your life / experience, momzie. They haven’t impacted my daughter’s life or consciousness one bit, since they aren’t anywhere on her radar screen other than the vague knowledge that they exist.</p>
<p>I’m glad you made that point about the cost of dorms. At Lake Jr.'s college I noticed that for the same kind of room, the price was identical at each Residence Hall on campus; a double in Tom Hall, Dick Hall or Harry Hall has the same cost. I don’t why this struck me as odd at first (couldn’t remember my own dorm $$ experience back when dinosaurs ruled the earth). Maybe because, like at many campuses these days, some residence halls are brand new, some have elevators, some either have a dinning hall or abut one; all features that “justify” differing fees. As I think about it now, I am glad that the housing fee is the same in each dorm at Lake’s school because the equality removes a distinction that perhaps we really don’t want to have at place where young people are supposed to engage in intellectual give and take.</p>
<p>So… Everyone gets in line to go to college because… why?</p>
<p>I’m kind of lacking in understanding here of why we feel it is so important that every one have access to education.</p>
<p>I think it really troubles me that the same exact people who disdain the exclusionary nature of some organizations on a campus are the same people applying to schools based at least partially on the fact that they are places which provide an “elite” education among one’s intellectual “peers.”</p>
<p>There are some on here who I have seen waxing rhapsodic over the importance to an intellectual of being among his or her peers and just how liberating this can be. I would hope these same exact people would admit that this is not only the case for the intellectually gifted. it is also the case for the physically gifted. </p>
<p>It’s a razors edge, and not particularly convincing to me, when you argue only for the need to be among his “equals” for your kid but not for others.</p>
<p>Here: I’ll say it. My kid has unlimited funds. Every once in a while she wants to go out with others who don’t have to watch what they spend. Sorry, but it’s true. She is very sensitive to this when she’s around those who don’t have unlimited funds. But, you know? every once in a while she wants to go shopping with her financial peers. She wants to go on a vacation where she can afford it without feeling guilty.</p>
<p>She would never pull the couch thing, and I doubt the kids who have less even know about this, but she and some of the kids know and they do do some things without the kids who can’t get backstage. That’s life.</p>
<p>I haven’t read Kirn’s memoir but I have heard his story before. I wondered whether the event was less about conscious exclusion than a more common problem-cluelessness on the part of the wealthy students about the fact that Kirn simply couldn’t come up with the money for furniture. I can imagine them saying to themselves, “We all agreed to furnish the room and now this guy won’t pay his share. What a cheapskate! If he’s going to be a jerk we should teach him a lesson.” Unfortunately kids from background where money is never a problem can be incredibly insensitive to the financial struggles of kids from less monied backgrounds.</p>
<p>I have to tattle on myself. In college I was bought a new car with a trust fund held for me. From the start the car was a total lemon. Every week some new part of the car fell apart. One day I was complaining about the car once again being out of order when my roommate softly said, “My parents just bought that car. They saved every cent for 5 years to get it.” Imagine my shame. That moment is still fresh in my mind 30 years later.</p>
<p>Wealthy students don’t have to actively exclude the less financially endowed to make then feel excluded. All they have to do is make the dinner reservation at an expensive Thai restaurant instead of a pizza place, go food shopping at Wholefoods instead of Price Chopper, buy complementary outfits at J. Crew instead of Old Navy, or invite their friends on “free” vacations to exotic places (“We’ll stay at my house. All you have to spend is the $1,200 airfare.”)</p>
<p>I’ve fully tried to impart to my kids that often life is not fair and not everyone supports egalite et fraternite (French is not my subject). And I know that parents cannot shelter their young adults from the hard facts…that you might be the odd man or odd woman out when it comes to socializing and spending money. No need to be crushed about it. It’s important to me that young people learn to interact and accept people who differ from themselves at face value. I’m not against exclusive clubs but in my opinion the relative equality of residence halls ideally promotes interaction among kids whom may have little in common, for the benefit of both.</p>
<p>Some rich kids have a pretty good sense of “noblesse oblige,” and others don’t. Right now, my daughter has some friends at college who have a lot more money than she does, and some who have a lot less. Everybody needs to be considerate in these situations.</p>
<p>I can’t imagine most students who come from monied backgrounds wanting to be forced into some egalitarian life style for 4 years. I don’t think they would choose such a college. </p>
<p>My D with the well-paying job is experiencing the frustration of sharing an apartment with a friend who is scraping by. Every decision is reduced to the penny. She cannot share her enjoyment of some new purchase or going to a trendy restaurant. She is sensitive to her friends limitations but it is not fun. Young single people should have fun.</p>
<p>LW, I think there is a huge importance of similar living environments when the kids get to school. And, quite frankly, there’s no way my kids’ friends at college would know she has unlimited funds. She would never make expensive reservations, or any of these things, ever. She has invited some kids on vacation, and, of course, we pay. Some kids are uncomfortable with that and others are not.</p>
<p>I don’t know what else can be done, except to instill in our kids a sense of responsibility and to encourage their non profit affiliations in whichever way.</p>
<p>Other than that, I think the idea that you can be “pro” exclusive schools because it benefits your born gifted child but opposed to fraternities and eating clubs, is misguided and lacks a certain amount of critical thinking. Everyone is born with advantages and disadvantages. Having a kid who’s born brilliant is not the “only” thing that is “allowed” to produce exclusive affiliations. At all.</p>