<p>Thank you, Monydad and Mamenyu. As the very happy parent of a first year student, I appreciate the reasonable tone. The very title of this thread has made me uncomfortable and a little tweaked, I must admit. My son (conservatory) and his best friend (college) are at Oberlin this year. They are smart, successful high school athletes (soccer and football) who actually have more than a little “prep” in them, but love intellectual discussion, tolerance and genuinely nice peers. They feel as though they have found “their people” at Oberlin, and have found a place where there is virtually no “trying on” of personas, because people feel extremely comfortable with who they are. I haven’t heard word one of “freaks”–because I think that whether someone pops their polo collar (seen it at Oberlin), wears goth, or whatever doesn’t mean that person wouldn’t be respected. I’ve now been on campus twice and haven’t seen anything outwardly unusual (I couldn’t even give you an instance of UNUSUAL) that I haven’t also seen at any campus anywhere. My overwhelming impression was about how FREAKing nice every student I encountered was. That’s the kind of freak I can get behind…</p>