Culture and such

circuitrider
Tue, 09 Dec 2014 14:52:22 +0000

The social scene at Wesleyan is one the best things about it, depending on the type of person you are. It’s the only party scene within NESCAC (with the possible exception of Tufts) that isn’t entirely controlled by its sports teams. Every weekend at Wesleyan, with its internationally recognized music scene, you can find live band concerts, a cappella groups, skit comedy, poetry readings, or lectures. The venues are numerous and centrally located and with the exception of a couple of all-male fraternities, pretty safe spaces to relax after a hard week of school work. In fact the whole modern Wesleyan campus was designed in order to lure kids away from Greek life. It may have worked all too well.

That being said, it is difficult to get away from drug and alcohol use with so much going on. Every year on April 20th there is a ritual photo-op at the top of the hill to demonstrate support for de-criminalizing marijuana laws (which they pretty much have done in Connecticut, for small quantities) and the turnout is usually impressive. I believe the record was 1,500 a couple of years ago. But, even assuming every one of them was a regular user (a HUGE assumption), that still leaves another 1,300 or so people who are not that into it. That’s enough people to populate Haverford or Swarthmore - a roundabout way of saying, there are enough people at Wesleyan who don’t partake that you will not feel intimidated or isolated.

Personally, I think the worst thing about Wesleyan is the hook-up scene. There are probably a thousand grandfatherly things I could say about it that would fall on deaf ears, so I’ll refrain. I just think there ought to be a cooling off period before people hop into bed with each other (there, I guess I said it anyway.)