<p>I love Wesleyan's academic offerings, but the perception of the social scene is a little disconcerting. Everyone says that Wesleyan is just a bunch of hipsters. Do hipsters really dominate the social scene?<br>
Will someone who doesn't play sports but is looking for a more traditional college experience fit in?</p>
<p>Thanks in advance</p>
<p>^^ I’m curious about that too.</p>
<p>In short, yes, you’ll fit in quite well. Most students here are fairly mainstream - Wesleyan gets its reputation from a visible minority. The school is almost homogeneously liberal, but hipsters are far from the only or most dominating “group” on campus.</p>
<p>what does ‘traditional college experience’ mean to you?</p>
<p>no. they are all hipsters or hippies</p>
<p>incorrect. they are most definitely NOT all hipsters or hippies.</p>
<p>Look, here’s what I love about wes. no matter who you are, you will find people to hang out with. and if you’re a hipster, yes you will find that group. But hipsters in no way dominate the social scene if that’s what you’re asking. In fact, I really wouldn’t say that any one group dominates the social scene. It’s very diverse. You’ll find where you belong and find that you can be friends with many different types of people.</p>
<p>-current wes student</p>
<p>So would you say Wes has a rather alternative scene on campus? Or is it more mainstream? And do the hipsters not mesh well with the other students? Or would you say the student body is more cohesive?</p>
<p>
yes; yes; not really; more or less</p>
<p>Anyone who comes to Wes will have a massive group of friends.</p>
<p>The thing that makes the people I’ve encountered at Wes different than those from my High School is that they are so much more accepting at Wes. </p>
<p>Of course I assume the huge jock is thinking something about the extremely blatantly queer girl who walked by but he doesn’t say anything and he won’t because he knows he is at Wesleyan where there are all sorts of people.</p>
<p>I’ve visited friends at other schools and the student body is nowhere near as accepting, diverse, and FUN as it is at Wes. </p>
<p>If there is one thing I’ve noticed in my first semester at Wes, it is that all the cliches I’d heard are wrong. I thought it would be hipster pothead city with wierd **** happening all over like naked parties and that the girls and guys were ugly like college ******* said. WRONG.</p>
<p>Take what I’m about to post with oceans of salt, but, back in the day we used to browse the web pages of the student newspaper in order to get a feel for what made different student bodies tick. The only problem with that method is that IMO all student newspapers tend to cover the same things and consequently begin sounding alike.</p>
<p>Alas, we now live in the age of the blogosphere and while it’s no less risky to draw too many conclusions from them, there are enough out there, particularly among Wesleyan’s competition, to make it a fun exercise. The biggest caveat regarding blogs is that, unlike newspapers, there’s no obligation on their part to be comprehensive or particularly representative of anything but their own bloggers, which may only consist of one or two students.</p>
<p>[Wesleying[/url</a>] - Clearly, the most popular student-run blog at Wesleyan; the number of posters have grown this year and there seems to be a real effort to be more inclusive than in years past (i.e., more postings about sports.) The one vacuum I detect - and it’s by no means solely a reflection on the folk at <em>Wesleying</em> - is the lack of a consistent African-American or Latino/Chicano voice. Now, it’s possible these voices are subsumed in other parts of the blog, like its rather extensive coverage of music and worker’s rights and other humanitarian issues, but the fact that I’m even hyper-aware of it, probably says something about my Wesleyan education. :p</p>
<p>[url=<a href=“WSO: Williams Students Online”>WSO: Williams Students Online]WSO</a> Discussions - Who took it?](<a href=“http://wesleying.org/]Wesleying[/url”>http://wesleying.org/) - I hesitate to even bring this up since WSO is the functional equivalent of a Williams ACB. The problem is, Williams doesn’t really have an equivalent to <em>Wesleying</em> and, to get there they would probably have to graft parts of the WSO onto something resembling Ephblog:</p>
<p>[EphBlog[/url</a>] - take a good look at Ephblog if you want to see yourself in about twenty years; it’s run almost entirely by alumni who periodically lurk the WSO to figure out what’s really going on on campus. It’s general editorial stance, if you can call it that, seems to be that any one them can do a better job of running Williams than whoever’s running the place at the moment.</p>
<p>[url=<a href=“http://www.houseofprocrastination.org/]House”>http://www.houseofprocrastination.org/]House</a> of Procrastination](<a href=“http://www.ephblog.com/]EphBlog[/url”>http://www.ephblog.com/) - this is a very piquant, very personal blog run by a recent Williams alum; it’s main point of interest to me is that the woman who runs it represents such a stark contrast to her fellow alum. She’s sort of a one-woman Wesleyan, posting in the purple wilderness.</p>
<p>Other LACs with blogs:
[MiddBlog[/url</a>] - no comment here; it speaks for itself.</p>
<p>[url=<a href=“http://www.madsvassarblog.com/]Mads”>http://www.madsvassarblog.com/]Mads</a> Vassar Blog](<a href=“http://midd-blog.com/]MiddBlog[/url”>http://midd-blog.com/) - further proof that Wesleyan and Vassar are the same college.</p>