| sorry for the delay. in promixate order:
re greek life: yes, greek life is a pretty big part of the social scene. however, i do not think it is fair to say that it is dominating in any way. to put things into some context, there are approximately 300 more non-greek students at bucknell than there are students (greek or otherwise) at hamilton. yes, some non-greeks party every friday and saturday night. but at the same time, some greeks dont. regardless, there are a ton of students looking to do other things and as such, there are plenty of concerts (both classical and contemporary), comedians, free or $1 movies, and other non-alcoholic activities every friday and saturday night. and, of course, there are plenty of nights where people are tired and just want to hang out and watch a movie with friends.
speaking from experience, i rarely went to frat parties. i had no problem with them (they can be a fun release), but far more often i chose to hang out with a few friends, whether we drank or not.
re sports: the only event that draws consistently large numbers of students is mens basketball (and even this wasnt particularly true prior to the big victories over pitt, kansas, syracuse and arkansas in 05 and 06). students will go to football games when the weather is nice, but relatively few attend the entire game (you might meet a few friends there at halftime, watch a bit and then decide to do something else). in terms of other sports, you might go to an occasional swim meet or soccer match to root on a friend or hallmate, but students typically dont attend in large numbers.
re students: as i have said many times on this board, bucknell students are the NICEST group of people i have ever encountered. was there the guy on my freshman hall who thought he was a bit special? sure. did i find a few hallmates a bit annoying come may? yep. but EVERYONE was uniformly nice.
to address the 'preppy' moniker, its hard to address because 'preppy' has become such a loaded word. does it refer to people who actually went to prep schools? people who are upper-middle-class and wear collared shirts? people who are wealthy, wear collard shirts, play sports and have no real motivation in life? frat boys? frat boy business/poli sci/econ majors? who knows. what i do know is that terms like 'preppy' have little meaning to me now that i have graduated from college. though i dress like one, i am far from a prep. and i can say i met people with all the above characteristics who were really cool and met people with few of them who werent. youll find the same to be true at colgate and hamilton, which both often find themselves with the same 'preppy' tag.
also keep in mind that bucknell has its share of 'engineering geeks' and 'artsy' kids. everyone gets along and, out of 3500 smart students, its hard to not find MANY with interests similar to yours. how i survived in high school, with perhaps 80 students (9-12) qualified to get into bucknell, im not sure.
my battery is dying... more to follow. |