Wesleyan University Top Questions

Wesleyan strives to be "diversity university." Now we'll ignore how lame that phrase is and address whether it is valid. Wesleyan is very diverse racially, geographically, and academically; there is a great emphasis in teaching the student body to reject any form of discrimination and to be unconditionally acceptive. This is all fine and good and for the most part the university succeeds. What you will not see here are much disparity in political thought- the school is overwhelmingly liberal and i feel dearly sorry for the underrepresented conservative contingent (well, maybe not). Wesleyan's greatest weakness in terms of diversity is the clear class divide that defines the student body of most private universities. Only those with wealthy enough families can attend a school like wesleyan, because of this everyone is perhaps more similar than we would guess.

there is some amount of racial divide on campus, though it's not terribly pronounced. Religion doesn't come up a lot in conversation, so I don't know, and definitely there's a demarcation between liberals and conservatives...it almost feels like we have less in common here than we would in other situations. So a conservative would probably feel out of place (as I'm sure you've heard already). to class we wear...whatever, pretty much. if you have class where you live you might just go wearing pajamas and slippers. most wes students are from the NE I think, especially NYC and Boston. but we have a great number of international students, and for some reason, LA kids. not so much from the midwest, though there are definitely some. financial backgrounds vary, though I'm sure that most kids are at least fairly well-off. students are moderately politically aware and active, though I think that decreases when midterms and finals roll around. people don't talk about their financial futures very much except to say that they probably won't be earning terribly much, though that doesn't seem to bother most people.

Wesleyan's student body is very diverse, especially for a small, private liberal arts school. The students here need to be ones who are active on campus and want to reach out and build relationships with people different from themselves. A student would feel out of place if they did not care about working to make a difference or get involved in some way on campus.

Most Wesleyan students are rich, radical, hippies or hipsters from New York or Boston. For all its claims about diversity, Wesleyan students all believe in the same far-left, atheist ideologies and have no tolerance for anyone who is more conservative. I really urge you to take this seriously. I remember reading in the Best 331 Colleges about how Wesleyan students are tolerant towards anyone except if you've "worn a white hat or had any Republican tendencies" and thought that that had to be an exaggeration, but it is not. As a Christian, conservative, my Wesleyan experience has been a constant struggle. There are also so many disgusting "sexually confused" people that my husband and I started playing a game where we guess whether someone is a girl or a guy. It is extremely challenging!

Wesleyan in terms of diversity (class, gender, race, ortientation, religion, nationality, etc.) is a lot more open than other schools. However, Wesleyan (its students, staff, faculty) tend to over look issues of racism, class, religion, etc. and tend to down play incidents that happen. Because of sheer numbers, students, particularly those who are of an ethnic minority, would feel out of place, undefined, and over looked at Wesleyan. If Wesleyan were a school of four lunch tables, there would be a "black" table, a "typical wes/hippie white" table, a "lgbqt" table, and table of your "average" white students. Students are largely left winged and those students are particularly active, especially with the upcoming elections.

I more or less discussed the students in "the big picture." Students are definitely politically aware and active, and often very far to the left. For someone who is concerned about that, I will say that being around some extreme lefties made me consider my arguments far more carefully, and pushed me toward the center. That's right suckers! I work in economics!

Wesleyan's student body is totally diverse. There is no dress code. I can't imagine anyone not finding their niche here.

Wesleyan is one of the most open college campuses in the country. Seriously.

Pasted below is an article I recently wrote for the Ampersand humor section of the Argus, the Wesleyan student newspaper. It sums out pretty accurately how I feel about the women at this school, and to a larger extent, the school itself. What I love about Wesleyan women (this is not a joke [well, it sort of is]) By Alex "Fuck J-Date" Gelman When I came to Wesleyan nigh onto four years ago, things were a bit different round these parts: existence was still in black and white, movies were referred to as “talkies,” and women - once derided as “barnacles on the good ship Wesleyan” by a trustee - were making their glorious return to Wesleyan University. I arrived at Wesleyan in the fall of ’aught-four, a strapping young college lad with suitcase in hand and ascot in neck. While I planned to double major in haberdashery and phrenology, I soon found myself beset with bewilderment and bewonderment by the fairest of sexes. And in the four years that followed - through all the heartache and hand jobs, the rejections and erections, the seeming infinite joy and timelessness of laying together in bed with one’s lover till daybreak, simply reveling in the metronomic symbiosis of breathing in her air and exhaling your own…and fisting - I have found one thing, and one thing alone to be true: I love Wesleyan women. For one, where in the Hell do they get those clothes?!? I mean really, sometimes I feel like every fucking girl at this school has, like, 50 fucking pashminas. I mean, honestly, the fact that I fancy myself as a heterosexual male and I know what a pashmina is just proves how head-over-heels, punch-drunk, roofied-up in love I am with the women of this school. Each time I even type that word - “pashmina” - I feel my testicles shrivel up into my body out of some visceral reaction to those flowing cashmere stoles, but I can’t help it. Every time I see some girl stroll through the main room of Olin with some paisley pashmina they bought from a one-armed, three-nostrilled gypsy on the streets of Prague, I feel my heart swell like a balloon, like some larger destiny has brought us together and I’ve known that pashmina forever, like I was there as that rugged shepherd sheared the fine hairs of his pashmina goat on the foothills of the Himalayas, like everything that has happened in my life has led up to this moment, as the sinewy frills of that silken fabric grace by my face. And that’s just the neck. Take a look at yourself in the mirror, female reader. The rest of your body is a veritable sartorial timeline dating back to the Bronze Age. Argyle sweater you nabbed off your grandpa at his funeral? Brings out your eyes! Hoop skirt? To the max, and with authentic whalebone casing to boot! Sequined tapestry you stole from a homeless man in Guatemala? ¡Muy bonita! And take a look at your feet. Now, I’ve been here for almost four years, and I can honestly say that I have never seen one female at this school wearing the same pair of shoes. Seriously. Sneakers, boots, goulashes, sandals, high heels, stilts, roller skates, rollerblades; every single pair of pedal attire I have seen at this school on the feet of females has been different from the last. Your shoes are like snowflakes; furry, clunky, shiny snowflakes, ubiquitously unique in their individuality. Now, as superficial as all these declarations of affection may seem, I see these aesthetic observations as a means to understanding what it is I truly love about the women of this school. Obviously, I guess this goes without saying, but everything I’ve said above is mired in my own interactions with the fairer sex at this school, a specific demographic that happens to be predominantly white, heterosexual, and able to afford the preponderance of clothes I may adore. But I really feel my admiration and adoration for Wesleyan women extends beyond these corporeal differences. There is a fierce independence, an undeniable streak of individuality that runs through the women I have had the pleasure of coming in contact with. Sure, the women at this school may not resemble the full-body-waxed, orange-skinned, headband-as-miniskirts labioplasties that attend some of our other American universities, but the females here are, as far as I can see, unashamedly women. And given the choice between some artificially-enhanced bionic Posh Spice-wannabe flashing her Silicone Valley to all assembled and a free-flowing, self-confident, life-embracing female who gyrates like a jello mold in the hands of a strung-out heroin addict at the sound of the first few beats of “Kids”…I would choose the latter every time.

Wesleyan is probably not the MOST diverse campus in the US, but it is also definitely not the least. The campus administration has put a lot of effort into creating safe spaces and otherwise supporting minority students, and into increasing diversity on campus. Like most selective private schools, there are a lot of wealthy students at Wesleyan, but they don't flaunt it, making it pretty easy for people of different economic backgrounds to get along pretty well. Students dress comfortably/casually for class, but hardly ever in pajamas and rarely in anything that says "Wesleyan" on it. Wesleyan is big enough that most people can find a niche there, but it is probably harder for people who aren't comfortable with being surrounded by people who are a little out of the mainstream.