Wesleyan University Top Questions

Wes is very accepting, so I don't think anyone would feel out of place. Some students wear sweatpants and pajamas to class and others wear designer jeans and leather boots. It totally depends of the student or the day. One student might wear a designer outfit to class one day and then pjs the next.

Wesleyan students love identity politics. Wesleyan students love their clothes. You definitely are what you wear here. All different types of students interact, but people tend to stick to their groups/"tribes" (read: hipsters, athletes, Freeman Asian Scholars, women of color, thespians, etc.) socially. Most Wesleyan students are from New England, specifically New York and Boston, or at least East of the Mississippi, with strong showings from LA and Chicago. I costs about $200,000 to go here for four years. People here are generally either really wealthy and can pay this in full or really not and get a lot of financial aid. The middle class gets totally fucked.

Wesleyan students and the administration really strive to be as inclusive as possible, to a truly remarkable degree. Racial tension definitely exists on campus, but I always appreciated that at least students and the administration demonstrated a huge willingness to bring those issues out into the open and seriously attempt to address them. There is a really robust and ever-present dialogue about the way that race, class and power worked on our campus. One thing I love is that during freshmen orientation, all freshmen go through a student-run workshop where they're taught about different gender and sexuality identities, and asked to go through a series of exercises where they imagine what college might be like for such a person. It's really radical as freshmen orientations go, and I loved it. Politically conservative students would feel very out of place, and would probably feel constantly attacked. There are tons of wealthy kids at Wesleyan, but the campus's progressive politics make flaunting that money very taboo. As a working class student myself, I sometimes felt that the masking of wealth was problematic, but I more often appreciated that conspicuous consumption was not a part of my social and academic worlds.

Upsides: A few good stereotypes actually hold up here. The student body is culturally, racially, and geographically diverse. They're generally very friendly. Many students are remarkably tolerant toward people from "alternative" backgrounds (define that as you will). The students are pretty liberal in general, which I would call a good thing. Also, they're quite smart. I mean, at least academically. Downsides: Wes students are not really as different or special as they think they are. Most of them come from money, and though they might have done a little waitservice in high school, they have financial safety nets that will comfortably sustain them until they enter the workforce. I know plenty of students who feel entirely comfortable charging a new textbook, iPod, or USB drive to the student account because "it's not my money." Since Wes students love to think of themselves as alternative, most carry a high degree of disdain for people from traditional backgrounds or beliefs. Practicing Christians bear the brunt of this, and are quietly mocked as "ignorant" or "conformist." Same goes for fraterities. It's no wonder to me why so many athletes at Wes choose to stick with their own or sit quietly in the back of class. Also, many Wesleyan students are just dumb. They can quote Hegel but they can't toast a bagel. They've been to Tashkent but forget to pay the rent. Ok, sorry, but seriously - Wesleyan students have less per-capita common sense than I thought possible. It's a wonder some of them even remember to breathe.

Wesleyan is a completely divded campus. Everyone gets a long but there is definitely a divide between the more conservative, frat party, athlete scene and the hipster unconventional scene. You will know everything about everyone in your group. The Usdan University center has two dining spaces, one side has become for athletes etc and the other for the other group. You and your friends always sit on the same side, if there is no space and you go to the other side you will not know or recognize anyone there.

I'd say that despite WEsleyan's gung-ho attitude about the diversity, the "diversity house" here allows a lot of student minorities to isolate themselves from the rest of the campus. The minority students i do know, that live near me or are in my classes are really friendly and personable and there's clearly no racial issues, but there is some annoying separation. The type of student that would not fit here is anyone who is narrow minded. honestly, the only students i know here are those that think everyone is weird and aren't accepting of other points of view. not be stereotype, but it is often atheletes that come here to play and don't understand the culture of the school. there is definitely a culture and preppy jocks sort of have their own little world. other than that there's loads of hippies and hipster and they make fun of each other but at the end of the day we're all friends with each other.

Can't live with them.

many people are really outspoken about racial and lgbt issues... much less so about religion. a devout christian person would probably feel very out of place here. i personally have not had trouble making friends with people in different "groups" of students... but i would never call myself part of their "group" if it was one im not really a part of - mostly because im not friends with eeeeveryone in each group.. just a couple of people.. so im not really part of that group. different groups at different tables might include: international students, jocks, lesbians, students of color, hipstery girls.. etc. but they can definitely interact with each other- they just aren't all best friends in between the different groups.

We are a diverse campus but I wish we were more diverse in terms of political representation. We get a lot of unfair stereotypes about a lot of drug use and having a lot of tree-huggers due to people associating us with Ohio Wesleyan. Students are generally quite politically active, though.

Wesleyan is very diverse. It is a little lacking in political diversity; I have only met one or two conservatives. I'd imagine they might feel a little out of place at times. Different types of students interact with each other all the time. There are not tightly-bound friend groups. Wesleyan students come from all over the place. Most come from New England and the northeast in general. Many are from California, too. Most kids come from upper-middle class families.

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.