<p>What the OP still has NOT done is describe exactly what he or the person who told him “let the freak flags fly” mean by “disenfranchised” and the OP’s word “outliers.” When/how is a student an “outlier” in the context of a midwestern Liberal Arts College? Any LAC, anywhere? He hasn’t defined the universe he calls “outliers” or the universe of non-outliers. Either description would help the rest of us understand what he’s talking about.</p>
<p>The OP comes across as someone giving us the old ‘wink wink’, i.e., "you know what I mean when I say ‘disenfranchised’ and outliers.’ " No, we don’t know what YOU mean. Please tell us so we can understand what you’re talking about. 99.9% of the students at Oberlin appear totally “non-outlier” to me. They look like the same kids you’d see in Cambridge, Mass, Evanston, ILL, and certainly at 98% of the LACs in this country. If seeing one transgender kid out of 2,800 students is enough to give ANYBODY the impression that Oberlin is full of people who “let the freak flag fly,” you’ve done yourself a disservice by repeating that unfortunate prospie’s “observation.” </p>
<p>Like I said, if you or your friend’s son does not want to attend a college or university where they might see a student who looks or acts differently, methinks your friend’s son shouldn’t bother applying to Harvard or Yale either. And stay away from Princeton, Columbia, Duke and MIT. I personally know kids enrolled at those esteemed institutions who love “letting their freak flag fly.” Just for the hell of it.</p>
<p>P.S.: To the OP. I have a university that i can recommend to your friend’s son. My undergrad alma mater. I graduated in '75. Private; conservative; Jesuit faculty. The FBI loved to recruit there. Most of my male classmates looked like budding FBI or Secret Service agents, even at the tender ages of 18-22. No “outliers.” No “disenfranchised,” although I’m still forced to guess at exactly what you mean by both terms. Actually, there was this one kid who sported a huge, Linc from “MOd Squad”/Angela Davis sized Afro. He looked totally different than 98.5% of the other students. I guess he was the “disenfranchised?” The “outlier?” Should prospies have avoided this campus because this dude was bee-bopping, Super Fly walking, huge sunglass, black leather gloving around campus, even though he was en route to a degree with Honors (he was a friend, so I knew about him), because to some he was “letting his freak flag fly?”</p>