<p>many people agree that Wesleyan is super liberal, but as a TRINITY COLLEGE student, i want to know how liberal Wesleyan is. And in what ways that Wesleyan is more liberal than Trinity?</p>
<p>I never heard that Trinity was liberal at all. Wesleyan, I heard, however is an amazingly liberal place. It’s definitely known as one of the most liberal and best liberal arts schools. So I’d say to answer your question, a lot more liberal</p>
<p>well. I have said i know that Wesleyan is more liberal than trinity. but in what ways? that is what i was asking for. does wesleyan function differently? or it is the student population that makes wesleyan more liberal?</p>
<p>The student population is generally rather liberal (though there are a fair amount of libertarians, too, and conservatives). </p>
<p>The main thing is that there is a LOT of stress on diversity, and acceptance/understanding of people who are different than you on the part of the administration, esp. during things like Freshmen year orientation. For instance, all freshmen are supposed to attend a workshop during orientation where they are introduced to various terms that people in the queer community use to identify themselves, such as gender-queer, and “ze/hir,” the gender-neutral pronoun, and people do use that kind of language. And anything that resembles a hate crime is taken very seriously (for instance my frehsmen year someone graffited the n-word on the elevators, and we had a hall meeting about it to discuss our feelings). I don’t know how that compares to trinity. </p>
<p>You can also see this liberalness in the fact that we have gender-neutral bathrooms in most dorms, and that people of different genders are allowed to live together (even in a one-room double) after freshmen year.</p>
<p>I agree with Weskid on everything except to note that it’s fairly rare (at least in my experience) to find someone actually using any “gender-neutral” pronouns (ze/hir). it might be used within the queer/gender-queer community, but on the campus as a whole, you don’t really run into it.</p>
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<p>yes, it does function differently. Generally speaking, student activities are planned from the bottom up, by students themselves. Usdan Center, the official “student center”, is the go-to place for university sponsored events, including regular meetings of the student assembly, a farmers market and some pretty good holiday themed events. But, they represent only a tiny fragment of the activities that bubble up from week-to-week and day-to-day. A prime example of a purely student run enterprise is <em>Wesleying</em>, one of maybe two or three all-student blogs within NESCAC, and easily the most irreverent of the bunch [url=<a href=“http://wesleying.org/]Wesleying[/url”>http://wesleying.org/]Wesleying[/url</a>].</p>
<p>Before Wesleying came along, one of the biggest complaints about Wesleyan was how difficult it was to find out about impromptu events. There are still complaints (just let Wesleying’s weekly round-up go more than a day without refreshing!) but, it’s a definite improvement.</p>
<p>One of the things that makes Wesleying’s job so difficult is Wesleyan’s legacy of letting students alone to make their own mistakes. You see it in the last remnants of traditional fraternities on campus (I think Trinity and Tufts are the only other NESCAC members that still permit them); you see it in the self-government permitted West College (a dormitory that doubles as one of the main artistic and musical venues on campus); you see it in the hundreds of “wood-frame” houses made available to seniors and which give the neighborhoods around Wesleyan so much their pop on weekends.</p>
<p>All is not idyllic. Middletown is a large town with a population that seems evenly split between the very young and the very old. The old constantly complain about their taxes while the young complain about not having enough to do. Somehow, Wesleyan serves as a convenient scape-goat for both groups (just to give you an idea of how this plays out: the Wesleyan gymnasium is the only place in town where kids from the neighbohood can play a game of pick-up basketball.)</p>
<p>All of which is to say, that Wesleyan is a pretty interesting place as well as a fun place to go to school.</p>
<p>yes, the administration is relatively tolerant of autonomous student cultures (though god forbid an arts festival be named after a Doonesbury character), and maybe a few professors will use gender neutral pronouns or whatever–but the size of the actual radical left at Wesleyan is pretty tiny.</p>
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<p>Actually, that’s an exaggeration; according to the website there are offically <em>only</em> 140 woodframes housing 1-6 students each. But, you do the math; that’s enough for most seniors and a number of juniors as well. :p</p>