(cont.)
Finally, the biggest disappoint by far was the social aspect of the college. I thought that Wooster had a great community feel, but I soon found out this is very far from the case. Now that I am at another college, the social scene stands out even more. People at Kent (my new college) smile at strangers and say hi to each other and hold doors open for people. It’s a very social campus and I met more people here in the first three weeks than I did during my year at Wooster. Wooster felt very cold, it was a lot of “keep your head down and only worry about yourself.” Sure some people were friendly and social, but the majority I ran into were not. It started when I first moved in. All of my high school friends from other colleges had hall meetings and hall dinners, where they quickly met people in their res halls and found their new best friends. Wooster does not do this. I met a few girls in my hall, but for the most part no one knew anybody and it was a very uncomfortable environment to live in. (Imagine showering in the communal showers everyday with people whose names you didn’t even know. Not the best). But I wasn’t too discouraged yet. Classes started and I joined some clubs and started to meet people. However, it was a slow process. By the time I left I had many close friends and leaving them was very hard, but finding friends at Wooster was a lot harder than I expected (and I am a very extroverted, social person). As another desperate attempt to meet more people, I even tried rushing a couple of sororities, but they were not for me at all so I dropped out of the rush process. Once I finally had a solid group of friends we found that there wasn’t really much to do. Nothing in fact. The school does virtually nothing for the students. I mentioned that I had a lot of fun at an overnight weekend. What I found out as an actual student is that the school pretty much only puts of events when they have visiting high schoolers or big donors (ie alumni weekend). We went to Scot Lanes a few times (a bowling alley in the basement of the student center), but that got pretty old pretty fast. We had movie nights in each other’s dorms, but again how much Netflix can you watch. WAC (Wooster Activity Crew) put on some events which were fun, but hardly enough to be considered a good social scene. There were craft nights about three times a semester (which I loved, but again how many craft nights can you go to. Also, do you really want to be 21 as a senior and be going to craft nights for your only source of fun?). The school put on an outdoor concert in the fall, which only had about 50 people at it and was pretty uneventful. There were two comedians and one hypnotist during the whole first semester. I asked around to see what most people did for fun since I was running out of ideas and the answer was pretty much one of two things: stay in my dorm and watch Netflix, or get drunk. Yes drinking. Drinking is everywhere at Wooster. I met with several people in the admisinstation during my transfer process (I really didn’t want to transfer, I wanted to love it there. I saw the retention specialist and a counselor in the wellness center to “ease my adjustment”) all of whom admitted to me that the campus has a drinking problem. Oddly enough, the party scene was pretty…weird. Wooster doesn’t have national frats/sororities nor do they have off campus Greek housing. I am NOT a partier, but I was so desperate for fun that I tried to go to a couple of parties. There was usually people sitting around in a dorm room binge drinking vodka. I don’t drink so I felt very uncomfortable and usually left after about 20 minutes. I know that sometimes groups do throw bigger, more fun, more traditional parties, but these happen much less frequently. The only fun party I went to was at a program house off campus. It was a private party thrown by one of the clubs I was in. We all played games and talked, but again after a few hours everybody there was trashed so I left. Also, this was pretty risky because security busts all parties at about midnight and if they see alcohol they call the actual police and everyone gets underage drinking on their record (which I think is a bit too harsh, even as someone who has never been drunk). The way I can best describe the social scene at Wooster is as follows: you have two options for having fun, you can either watch Netflix alone in your dorm or get drunk until your stomach needs pumped.
Also, on a very serious note, the social scene at Wooster can be very damaging to those with mental health issues. Many of my friends developed pretty severe depression (some stopped eating and sleeping completely. It was terrible), and unfortunately depression is far more common on campus than it should be statistically. My counselor even agreed than an abnormally high amount of people on campus seem to struggle with their mental health, which isn’t surprising knowing just how isolating and uneventful the social scene really is.