TEEN CENTER :: COLLEGE CENTER : FRESHMAN JOURNAL

FRESHMAN JOURNAL: NOVEMBER 6, 2006
Find Your Voice as a Freshman

Ashley C. Sawyer

At a recent meeting I attended, the secretary of the organization asked, "Does anyone have any questions or comments?" She glanced around the meeting room, making friendly eye contact with everyone, however when she reached me the look she gave read, "Not you freshman; you keep your mouth shut."

It is the unwritten rule on campus. Seen through certain on-campus organizations and sometimes in the classroom is the silent hierarchy that reigns. Even groups that claim to be welcoming and actively searching for new members in reality are searching for new mimes, freshman to sit in the room and make the organization seem larger but not dare to have an opinion of their own, let alone speak up about it.

Fraternities and sororities make an effort to talk about brotherhood and sisterhood, but the things they do to their prospective members that are often arduous and embarrassing show the exact opposite of community and camaraderie. It could perhaps be completely natural; anyone with a younger sibling would be lying if they said they had never made a cruel joke, forced them to do their chores or threw an unwarranted punch every now and then. But in the grand scheme of things here and at a lot of places is freshmen are insignificant and must be informed of their overall ignorance of the way things operate.

At Rutgers, everything from course registration to dining hall menus is done online, so when I went to the health center, I was told I was supposed to make an appointment online, and that I must be totally illiterate or dumb to not have known that. I realized this has nothing to do with me not knowing the rules but everything to do with my status on the social ladder of college.

It seems that everywhere I go-just like in some horror movie-I am sitting in the center of the room surrounded by countless monsters with their eyes focused on me. But the upperclassmen monsters are not my biggest fear. My biggest fear is to drop and break a plate in the dining hall in front of everyone. If a senior breaks a plate, the surrounding students will look up, recognize the individual and move on. If a freshman were to make that same awful mistake it would prompt a series of sarcastic applause and shouts of "Good job freshman!" or "Way to hold your plate!" Anytime anyone does something wrong or is yelling loudly on a shuttle bus, the upperclassmen make eye contact with each other, a look that implicitly says "freshman." Upperclassmen tend to think that only a freshman can do things that are just plain dumb.

Before I went to college, I thought that that mentality-the idea that the older you are the more respect your presence warrants-would be erased. In some senses, they must exist but are not as pervasive as they were in high school. Classes are relatively mixed in terms of class year, and there are many who recognize that freshmen are not diseased and will attempt to communicate with us. Yet the people that stick out in my mind are those who will make an effort to hush any underclassmen.

It forces me to look back to my senior year in high school. Did I somehow earn this treatment because of the way that I treated freshman when I was in a position of power? Questioning my role-and that maybe I have done the same things to someone else before-makes me realize that the transition is just hard when I was coming from being on top last year. In high school everything was catered to seniors: senior prom and homecoming, getting seated on the track bus first, walking the halls knowing that I was in charge. Then to suddenly shift to being at the bottom of the totem poll can be a shock.

Even academically adjusting from being at the top and then suddenly at the bottom is hard. When I was a senior in high school, I knew the teachers and knew exactly how the system worked. Or maybe because I already knew I was going to college, I got what is commonly called "senioritis." I did as little work as possible and still managed to pull away with A's. I was relaxed and comfortable, because I knew what to expect, whereas here, I have to learn the ropes. Once I have learned how things work here, from scheduling to where to sit on the shuttle bus, it will show and maybe warrant the respect I crave.

I try to be, but I am not always patient. In order for me to make an impression and garner respect, I might have to demand it. If I stay quiet and wait until next year to voice my opinion, it might be too late. So when I was in that meeting, I raised my hand, just because I had a question, and I couldn't keep my mouth shut.