It occurred to me at some point during the chaotic fortnight that is girls’ Spring Rush, when I found myself shaking the hands of a hundred first-year females and continuously caught in conversations about Old Dorms and O-Hill, to which all I could say was, “Aw! First years!” again and again: I am kind of a jerk.
But my little self-discovery brings to mind an unexplainable mystery of human nature. Why do people need to feel superior? Why must there be a social distinction between the old and the new? It’s a game we play, all of us. With every social institution, it seems, there are rituals or patterns of behavior, like punishment, reserved for the older and used against the younger and new. In elementary school, the back of the bus was reserved for the cool sixth graders, while the younger ones were forced to sit up by Pat, the bus driver, who loved smooth jazz and smelled like eggs. And even now, in college, we stick to these social patterns. How many of you have called out “First-years!” to a pack of girls walking down Rugby Road together, or at least laughed at someone who did? If so, chances are you’re a jerk, too.
And yet, unfair as these measures seem from an objective stance, every one of us feels as though they are justified. We all feel like we’ve earned our place as upperclassmen; therefore we maintain the right to make those below us work for their keep. But must younger be synonymous with inferior? Must we subject first-year students to modest levels of ostracism?
I think it goes deeper than lighthearted mockery and ridicule. I think it’s something psychological. That’s right, ladies and gents. You heard it here first.
Take, for example, the instance of hazing. When the new pledges of a fraternity have to struggle to earn their membership in this new group — i.e. sacrifice their dignity doing whatever horrific acts the other brothers dream up — they inexplicably feel more tightly connected to the group afterwards. Personally, I find this causal relationship completely bizarre. If someone soaked me in beer, sent me on a wild squirrel chase, then forced me to separate ice cream sprinkles by color with honey on my hands, I’d be anything but emotionally bound to those people. Hazing is not good. You hear that, frat boys? Not good. Unless it’s mildly entertaining to watch. But alas, I digress.
The point is that there is a tendency in human nature to want to belong to the group. Pledges get caught up in the madness, become overwhelmed with the chaos of it all, and when it’s over — when they finally pass the test — their inevitable instinct is to be more invested in the fraternity than ever imaginable. So when the next year rolls around and there is a new batch of victims, the frat bros use this exact logic to justify hazing those below them. The struggle of the journey makes the destination that much sweeter. (And, yes, I did just say “frat bros.”)
Move along with me, friends, to the bigger picture. The hypothetical fraternity of which I speak can be extended to the student body as a whole. Every fall, new first-year students arrive at the University. And each incoming first year will say he or she is a U.Va. student. Sure, he or she may have stocked up heavily on Virginia paraphernalia from Mincer’s or memorized the map of Grounds with the skill of any University Guide, but is that first-year student really a U.Va. student? Does that person know that sundresses and bowties are the norm at University football games? Will that student accidently take crunchy potato chips to the first floor of Clemons? Will he or she call Grounds “campus” and consequently be shunned by fellow classmates?
All of these situations pose the potential for the awkwardness that is first year. But don’t we need that phase to learn the dos and don’ts and adjust to our new surroundings? We need to be laughed at, and we need to make mistakes. Maybe we even need the mockery of older students who have already paid their dues. Sure, it’s a vicious cycle, putting little ones through the same torture we once endured, but when we finally come full circle, we know we are truly U.Va. students.
And now I’ve done that thing where I get completely lost in my whirlwind of logic and wonder if I’ve ended up contradicting myself. But I have faith that you all can figure it out for yourselves. Cheers.
Lauren’s column runs biweekly Thursdays. She can be reached at l.kimmel@cavalierdaily.com.
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