Earlier this summer, I became curious about what kind of kids the incoming '12s would be. So I went to the best source of information for someone who wants to know what people are really like: Facebook. I'm not a Facebook regular, but I wanted to know who these 1,100 new Dartmouth students were. Going through the Dartmouth Class of 2012 Facebook group, I saw all the usual topics of conversation: DOC Trip sections, dorms and miscellaneous apprehensions about college. Then I stumbled across a topic of conversation that surprised me: "Steroetype the person above you" (so spelled ... worst class ever).
You might think that the way these prospective students stereotyped each other is incredibly shallow. They pigeonholed their peers based on their names, their pictures, and the things that they had already written. Some of these criteria were things the stereotyping victims could control, but others weren't. And given that these people definitely haven't met, we can be sure that they were making judgments based only on this tiny amount of information.
My first thought, as a now-worldly sophomore, was that it is so typical and immature for nervous incoming freshmen to be so willing to stereotype the people around them publicly. They didn't know anybody here, and it was just their way to try to compartmentalize their new world to make it easier to manage. It's a natural social defense mechanism, and I was sure that as their Dartmouth career went on, they would become less judgmental and more even-keeled.
Then I started to think about the presence of stereotypes on the Dartmouth campus and about the way we use them. Even if we're all as self-confident as we'd like to think we are, and if we don't consider what other people think about our actions, we are still just as prone to being victimized by stereotyping as the contributors to that discussion on Facebook. On this campus, people get stereotyped for the tiniest, most insignificant decisions they make.
The big stereotypes are obvious. Greek ones are by far the most common (see Paul Glenn '10's "Finding Your Way Down Frat Row" in the August 2008 Freshman Issue). The building in which a Dartmouth man shakes out on rush night will, in the public eye, shape his public image more than anything else.
But the list of stereotypes around campus goes on, and it becomes clear just how shallow we are in our assumptions about others. Students here regularly get stereotyped based on their major (chem nerds), what sport they play (sweet laxers), what year they are (naive freshmen and aloof seniors), where they study (I'm talking about you, First-Floor-Berry attention-whores), where they eat (everybody knows Collis is the campus capital of feminism) and how and where they exercise, to name a few.
The big difference between our stereotypes and the ones in that Facebook discussion is that we are painfully aware of the impression we are giving when we make decisions on this campus. We know this because almost all of us have judged others in ways we wouldn't like to be judged ourselves -- a major violation of the Golden Rule. In turn, this makes it even more difficult to ignore the potential for stereotypes in our own actions and simply act by desire. You know when you sit down on FFB that you're at risk of being labeled as an attention-whore. But maybe you're just sitting there because it happens to be the most convenient desk and you hate the stairs.
With such a widespread presence of labeling, there are only three options for a Dartmouth student. He or she can embrace the stereotypes, by, for example, not doing any work on First Floor Berry, but only going on Facebook. Alternatively, he or she could avoid the labeling altogether by never setting foot on First Floor Berry. The former strategy will only perpetuate the stereotyping and the latter is a life lived in fear; neither of these are desirable. The only viable option left seems to be to take the high road and ignore the stereotypes altogether and just do whatever we want to do, regardless of what others will think.
I don't mean to make this sound like a social epidemic on campus or the biggest problem we face in the coming school year. It's just one that makes Dartmouth feel too much like high school and too little like college. Still, as I closed the stereotype discussion on Facebook that got all these thoughts jogging in my head, I couldn't help but think that their unpreventable stereotyping was worse than ours. This does make sense because they are clearly the worst class ever. But maybe, just maybe, they can ignore all the stereotypes that I've so hypocritically laid out in this column and live a Dartmouth career unaffected by them.
