Swarthmore College Top Questions

Swarthmore is a very socially conscious community, being very liberal and very aware. People bend over backwards to not be offensive, heteronormative or supportive of malicious dominant paradigms. That being said, Republicans might feel a little uncomfortable, but they'll fit in just fine. Students are mostly from the World. They are from Varied backgrounds. The 4 tables of students will be Mixed and Diverse. Students wear Whatever they want to class. If students ever talk about how much they'll earn one day, it's in dispair over being a liberal arts major. Here's to living in a box!

Swarthmore has a very diverse student body, with representatives of many races, nationalities, religions, sexual preferences, etc. If anything, a politically conservative student may feel slightly out of place here as Swarthmore is largely liberal, however, the College Republicans do have a presence on campus as well.

A highly conservative student, one who cannot appreciate the fantastic offerings of diverse thought would feel quite out of place at Swarthmore. However, that is not to say that politically conservative students have no place at Swarthmore, especially given the great re-emergence of the Swarthmore Republicans group. Most students dress like average college students in Sweatshirts and jeans, athletic apparel, or polos and khakis (the latter being least represented), with the exception of students who dress up in suits on 'Foxy Fridays.'

In the Sharples dining hall, you find these four groups of students, each sitting at their own table: 1. The Swarthmore Warders of Imaginative Literature (SWIL) kids, also known as Swillies, all huddle together playing board games, wearing cloaks, and making inside jokes that relate somehow to sci-fi, fantasy or general absurdity. This is the club that puts on the pterodactyl hunt each year and also re-enacts the Valentine's Day Massacre. 2. The international students. They seem to arrive on campus before all the other freshmen and are already bonded together as friends by the time classes start. 3. The jocks and frat boy types, a maligned minority, looking generally hostile toward everyone in this egghead atmosphere. Most of the College Republicans can be found in this group or in economics classes already wearing suits and carrying briefcases. 4. Studiers with textbooks open. They are quizzing each other on the new German vocabulary and halfheartedly picking at their peanut butter bagels.

People are too PC. You have to watch over your shoulder anytime something you say is vaguely referring to any race, gender, socio-economic class or whatnot. People need to let loose about their hang ups on the above mentioned groups.

i'd say that students are pretty segregated, which i think is sad, but not different from any college in america. ha, i know republicans feel out of place at swat. students wear anything, i've seen stiletto heels and i've seen pajamas. different types of students definitely interact one and one, but the groups of students you see together tend to be fairly homogeneous. if there were 4 tables, one would be the fratboys, one would be the dirty hippie frisbee players, one would be the SWIL table (but they aren't called that anymore), and one would be a sad kid sitting all by himself and mumbling into his cell phone headset. students are from all over the country and even the world. i'd say upper middle class to rich predominates financial background, which i find sad, again. i felt really out of place often because to these students, it's nothing to pay $100 per private dance lesson, or to go to rome on spring break. students are VERY politically aware, though certainly you find apathetic people. they are very left with some loud conservatives. i don't recall most of them talking about making a lot of money, except for some of the aforementioned conservatives.

I think it is difficult to be conservative on campus, but I would encourage outspoken, open conservatives to try Swat and make it a more even keeled place. Because friends are often based on freshmen hall configurations and classes as well as clubs, everyone gets the chance to interact. That's great. I wear jeans and a tee shirt (often barefeet) to my classes, but others go all out and dress up.

The four tables: 1. The frat guys and LASS girls. They aren't stupid, but like to pretend that they are and get drunk a lot. I'm convinced this is carried over from their lack of popularity and status as nerds in high school. 2. The SASS, SOCA, etc kids - aka, people of color. Although most groups of friends are mixed, some black, hispanic and asian students tend to hang out together. It's not exclusive, all of them have white friends; it just works out this way. This group is really loud and sometimes plays dance music in the cafeteria. Many of them are in Rhythm and Motion, a dance group. 3. The physics/math/computer science/etc kids. They can be identified by their typical nerd look and discussion of Star Wars. 4. The barn kids. These kids are hipsters - guys in tight jeans, girls in flats and leggings, interesting hair cuts.. and so on. Very indie. Many of these people are queer in one way or another. Of course, there are other types! A cappella nerds, drama nerds, Women's Studies girls, the LGBGTQ activism crowd, the not-frat-like jocks... I don't even know where I fit in. There is so much interaction between different supposed social grous that it's not necessarily worth identifying them. You will have classes, live with, and be in extracurricular activities with every type of erson you can imagine. Swarthmore is very diverse on issues of race, class, and sexuality. It is about 50{4a082faed443b016e84c6ea63012b481c58f64867aa2dc62fff66e22ad7dff6c} white and maybe 10{4a082faed443b016e84c6ea63012b481c58f64867aa2dc62fff66e22ad7dff6c} queer. The one place where there isn't much diversity is in politics - Swarthmore is very liberal.

I think I mentioned this earlier, but Swarthmore boasts a very diverse student body. I'm not sure how diverse it is in terms of political tendencies, and I think it takes a decent amount of effort to really get to know people of different groups. I think Swat is predominantly a seemingly upper-middle class school. It appears as if most students are reasonably well-off, in terms of how people dress. In class you have everything ranging from sweats to suits, but most people wear jeans and a reasonably nice shirt or t-shirt. It's nothing flashy, but it appears as if people have enough money to buy brand jeans or whatever. However, I think that there is a lot more socio-economic diversity at Swat than there appears. People don't really talk about it that much. There is class awareness month, which tries to bring up campus discussions about class on campus, but I think that most people can easily go without consciously considering it.

Students are upper-middle class by and large, but try to hide it: there's a stigma associated with being rich. But you can tell anyway. Even as someone who was from just a middle class background, I was made aware of and uncomfortable with this difference from time to time - you could always tell who could be unconcerned about loans after school, who could have the fun unpaid internships and trips abroad, etc. Though the student body is making an effort to get people talking about class issues, an initiative backed by the administration and getting more and more attention (as far as I know - graduated two years ago!). Different racial, etc. groups interact with each other, but in a sort of limited way. The international kids are their own group, black students another, southeast Asians another. There's an activisty LGBTQ group that I feel like was less cliquey, but maybe that's just because I was tangentially socially involved with that particular enclave. As with the class thing, people are good about getting things out into the open and talked about on the Swarthmore campus - people are super involved with and aware of identity politics, which sometimes makes it feel like there are more problems at Swat than other places. This of course, is the opposite of the truth - we just care more. Swarthmore is a very liberal school - this is a pretty true generalization that can be made about the school. I will also say, however, that while the radical types get a lot of attention, there's a big swath of the school that's more generically moderate-liberal and fairly apathetic, politically. Though it does feel like there are about twelve open Republicans on campus.