Wesleyan isn't as diverse and weird as it seems
This is my slightly annoyed and opinionated response to the March 6, 2007 Hartford Courant article Students Want Wesleyan To Keep The Weirdness By Daniella Altamari.
Wesleyan is supposed to be cool right? All about diversity, gay rights, individual expression, and rigorous academics. I hate reading about Wesleyan's diversity, their "weirdness," and their supposed "open-mindedness" to all things different. uuugh I read this article today, and wanted to share my own Wesleyan experience.
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Background: I was a "troubled teenager." Without getting in to all the personal details of my life story, I'll just say that I spent time in the "system" - institutions, residential facilities, group homes, teenage homeless shelters (by choice) etc.. I finished a grand total of 7 days of 9th grade, and if memory serves me correctly, I think those 7 days might have been at 7 different places. I was moved about quite frequently, but even when I was in one place for a decent amount of time, I had absolutely no interest in high school, high school culture, forced regurgitation of facts I didn't want to know, or superficial popularity bullshit. I taught myself, unintentionally. I just read. Not what people told me to read, but what I wanted to read. And I wrote. Not essays on the history of the civil war, but what ever I felt like writing. And the more I read and wrote, the more I realized how much I didn't know, so I ventured in to areas I initially found less interesting, in order to more fully understand the things I did find interesting. I loved psychology and sociology, so I taught myself algebra and statistics so I could understand what the research articles I was reading really meant. I taught myself biology, chemistry, and physics so I could better understand the brain. There was no plan, I just liked learning, burrying myself in books, probably to escape life.
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Anyway, when I was 16 and had absolutely no high school credit (and therefore wouldn't graduate until 20 if I went back to regular school!), my father had recently committed suicide, and everyone realized that nothing in the world would convince me to wander high school hallways like a drone, I was granted special permission to take the GED test early. At the time it was a two day test and I was told to study for it. So I did... I got stoned both nights, slept late, and made it to the test in my PJ's both afternoons, 10 minutes late both times. I got a perfect score though:-) Getting a perfect GED score isn't actually something to shout on the roof-tops about, but I felt like I had proven my point. I didn't, and had never, needed to walk those mean hallways and sit in those boring classes, getting stared at or made fun of for looking and being different. (I always tend to look "different," unintentionally, because I just can't fake who I am).
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So I eventually took my first college course at MCC, continued to live life exactly the way I wanted to, and had a wonderful time with my partner Chris. We had so much fun in those early years, in different apartments, going where ever we wanted when ever we wanted. Coffee in Greenwich Village at 3 am, sure lets drive there! Boston, the beach at midnight, a cool resturant in New Haven? Sure, why not? He was a bar-tender at a popular club in those days, and only had to work 3 nights a week to make almost what he makes now (without insurance or benefits, but we didn't need those back then). We even spent a summer secretly living on his father's un-used, docked boat. We wandered the shore together, hand in hand, at 4 in the morning after he got out of work, slept all day, sun-bathed on the boat deck, used the "club facilities" as if we belonged there, talked endlessly about life and love. We also concieved Jordan there:-)
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When Jordan was three and I had a grand total of 7 MCC classes completed, I applied to Wesleyan and Trinity, with no high school transcripts, a few Community College classes, but really strong SAT and ACT scores, great recommendation letters, and heartfelt essays. At Trinity, I applied to the adult IDP program, a special flexible program for adults that allows them to complete their degree at their own pace. Wesleyan had no such program, so I just applied as a regular student. At Trinity, I was interviewed by "the IDP committee," a very uptight looking group of 7 faculty and administrators seated around a larger than life table, with me at the front. At Wesleyan, I had to be interviewed by the Dean of Admissions (as opposed to just a regular admissions person) because I was a "different," non-traditional adult student. I showed up to both interviews in the same outfit, my version of "dress up clothes" at the time - a beautiful hand-made swirly tye-dyeish dress I picked up at one of the last Dead concerts (that thing lasted forever, thanks to the hippie who hand sewed it), and a hand-made wool knit sweater, with Birkenstocks on and my dreadlocks tied back.
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Now let's back track a little. When I started the application process, paid the fees, and submitted my applications, they of course didn't include all the "normal" material. Trinity called me and asked me to explain the situation, and then took it in stride. The person in the admissions department at Wesleyan laughed at me, saying something like "You're applying to Wesleyan with no high school transcript, a GED, and 7 community college courses? Have you even researched this school, do you know how selective we are?" I just asked that she process my application and schedule an interview anyway.
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I toured both schools. Trinity was annoying, up-tight, mostly Republican, preppy, and just not "me." Wesleyan was "me" - full of hippies, gays, liberals, opinionated people, think-outside-the-box people. So anyway, lets go back to those interviews. At Trinity, I sat uncomfortably at the head of the table of intimidating people, answered their questions as honestly as I could and left feeling like I didn't have a chance. At Wesleyan the Dean clearly liked me, relaxed in his chair, spoke casually with swears mixed in with his words, and eventually decided to take a walk around campus with me while we spoke. We talked politics, life, philosophy, and even about our children. He told me I was in. Then he said something that I will never forget. He looked at me and said "I know I can talk them in to admitting you even though you're older and you won't live on campus, because you look young enough to fit in, you look like you belong here."
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Wesleyan has no program for adults going back to school, they have no system in place to support people who haven't followed the typical academic path. In fact, when I asked the Dean, he informed me that they had only 3 other adult students, all of them single, without children, and living in the dorms, and that I would be the only "mother" and non-traditional student living off campus. So I was being accepted partially based on my academic merits, but what sealed the deal, the real clincher, was that I also had the "right look," the "different like everyone else on campus" look. Had I been the same me dressed like a typical housewife, I doubt I would have been accepted, whereas Trinity accepted me despite the fact that I was the only weird looking one on campus. (That's not an exaggeration, by the way. When I first started, I really was, although that's changed some over the years.)
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So, where is the diversity at Wesleyan? Where's the weirdness? It's full of ONE kind of weirdness, one kind of diversity- the hippie, liberal, gay-friendly, Democrat, or at the very least, non-mainstream, kind of diversity. If you have the academic ability AND the right look, the right political beliefs, the right sexual orientation, or the right "weirdness" then you fit. But.... where is the room for healthy political debate in a school full of Democrats? Where can you open up minds about how people percieve the gay community if it's a given that everyone there thinks the same about the topic? And about diversity, where are the adult students, the people who followed a different path, the young parents with potential, the people who joined the Peace Corps or only decided to go to college after walking around India for few years or something?
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Sooo, I didn't just sent back the form saying I was opting not to attend despite the full scholarhip they had granted me. I called the same lady who laughed at me, told her I had been accepted but was rejecting the offer because I wasn't happy with the school. (That was just my little "who's laughing now" moment!) Then I took my beat up, old, flower painted, sticker clad car, and drove my dread-locked, tye-dyed, weird self right to Trinity, the land of the Lexus, Izod shirts (did you even know those existed anymore?) Prada bags, and girls who whined that their fathers hadn't put 10K in their "miscelaneous spending accounts" or taken them to the Alps over winter break.
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I got stares and whispers while I sat in class because of my "look." Because I didn't look much older than the average student at the time, I got hushed suprised mumbles when everyone in Child Psychology was talking theoretically and I raised my hand to talk about my own experience as a parent ("like Ooooh MY Gawd, she has a KID?? - insert valley girl inflection). I got raised eyebrows when I spoke from a different perspective (uh, the poor one, lol) in sociology courses. In a place where people were often judged by the name brand of their clothes or handbags, or their weight and hair, where anorexia was all too often openly promoted as a "life-style choice," instead of a disorder, and girls regularly made themselves throw up in the public restrooms, what could be more fun than showing up in hand sewn patchy hippie pants, or better yet, sweat pants, with a donut in my hand? I just wanted to scream "You don't HAVE to be as skinny as a stick to be OK!!" and although I never actually screamed it, I did get the chance to say it to girls I got to know. I had a blast taking the half semester course "fitness 101" when I was 4-6 months pregnant with Mikailey, with all the 100 pound girls looking at me in horror and whispering (I honestly don't think they ever figured out I was pregnant... I think they just assumed the daily work-outs weren't doing me much good:-) After I got straight A's for a few semesters, the professors took notice, making me their research assistant, their TA, and eventually the "presidential scholar" for the psychology department who got to go to monthly meetings with the college President and represent the psychology department (despite the fact that I don't think I represented the view of the average psychology major, but probably the more liberal political and academic views of the very cool professors). I was in a foreign land, a land I had never seen or experienced before, but eventually I was accepted for who I was despite being "different," not because I was different like everybody else.
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So if Wesleyan is so weird, SOOO diverse, where are the different people- as in the people who are different from 99% of their student population? If stuck-up, up-tight, Republican, rich-kid-land, Trinity can accept a hippie mom who never went to high school, can Wesleyan accept an Izod wearing, straight laced Republican, "handed everything on a silver platter," rich kid?? Their is no room for healthy debate, changing stereotypes, or dispelling myths in a place that only has one type of people - even if the people are all different from the main stream. Wesleyan is a haven for like minded people. Trinity still has racial relation problems, a GLBT community that isn't fully supported, a lot of kids who grew up a certain way with certain priviliges that most of the world doesn't have (leading to their somewhat limited view of the world, and Hartford in particular), and a few Democrats mixed in with a lot of Republicans. But still, they are more diverse, in my opinion, and more of a reflection of the real world. The real word isn't a haven for like-minded people, it's a diverse world full of different opinions, where we have to fight, debate, and advocate for what we believe is right. So, no, I didn't do anything huge to change the world in my adult college decision, but I do think I opened a few eyes, made a few people think, and re-examine their stereotypes and prejudices, whereas at Wesleyan I would have fallen in with the crowd, never been noticed, and never made a mark.
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So that's the long story of why I told Wesleyan where to shove it, and why it annoys me when they are lauded for being so diverse and open-minded.
"Bitte- nicht so schnell!!"- translation: "slow down not so fast!!" 
