Written by Jake Schnaidt• 8:14 pm• Opinions • 134 Comments

So, I’m a senior, and here’s what I see when I look behind me:

The Bro. He is like a snake slithering around our arms and biting between our knuckles before we can look him in the eyes and ask him what for. A Bro is also this: a disdainful, morally inept athletic or once-athletic college male who not only lacks sincere human empathy, but uses this lack to his advantage. He is an anarchist-capitalist. He is close to being a sociopath: “a person…whose behavior is antisocial and who lacks a sense of moral responsibility or social conscience.”

But sociopathy is congenital; Bros have been failed by a society or a family that has systematically disregarded their moral development, and because Bros are born into riches, they are released into a world which will gladly take their money in spite of their socially parasitic ways.

However, not all athletes are Bros. But most Bros are athletes, and most if not all Bro athletes are on those two certain teams that need not be named. I want to emphasize that there are some really great people who play varsity sports and are sadly lumped together with this stereotype I’m reinforcing. These “good” guys have happily integrated into the vocation of the “Student” whereas the offenders have yet to peek out from their guises as “Student-Athletes,” or rather, “Athletes” who nominally participate in academia. When did these people start becoming a problem at Conn?

The floodgates opened a few years ago when the newly crowned president decided, very shrewdly and with no abandon, to overhaul the college’s image in the face of the school’s relative decline in rankings. It is Higdon’s unilateral project, when one skips the rhetorical hogwash, to increase the endowment of this institution, this brand, this corporation. It is, some would say, a “necessary evil” that has created a strict paradigm upon which the school has begun to transform the college identity into a more market-friendly product. Market-friendly in liberal arts now connotes a “do it all” school like Williams College.

Suddenly and unrealistically, Conn changed from a toned-down Wesleyan to a baby Duke. We are nearing a state at which our school doesn’t have students with varying interests, but rather, puzzle pieces. Admissions needs specific proportions of each “type” of student (athlete, activist, creative, intellectual) in order for the new paradigm to work.

It is a quick-response strategy for downsizing that works in corporate offices where tradition and values matter less than worker efficiency. At a college where alumni presumably care more about their alma mater’s reputation than they do about their old workplace’s, rapid-change business practices do not always result in happy alumni.

To keep investors happy, businesses either reinvent themselves or they expand. Reflecting on the two most publicized reforms, the new camel mascot and the new athletic facility, there is no doubt that reinvention is Higdon’s M.O. Values are sacrificed for image, and the judicial system and student governance which once depended on the democratic model of the self-policing citizen to enforce community values are no longer sufficient. The deterioration of the Honor Code, the lost and whining child prodigy of Conn, is an effect of the school’s shifted focus to grab quick capital to mend our ranking woes and insecurities as a school falling off the mini-Ivy bandwagon.

Though it’s hard to believe, the Honor Code was once a truly significant part of student life. But after seeing the college jump on academic violations and shy away from social ones, I’m not sure I trust the Honor Code to still be a relevant tool in student self-governance.

However corrupt it gets, though, as long as we throw in a truckload of benefit shows (there are way too many of these), a Take Back the Night, and a dozen other under attended lectures and workshops on women’s rights, men’s rights, babies’ rights and earth’s rights, trustees and other donors should be satisfied by the annual list of important educational gatherings.

Let the world-burdened kids play with their idealism, but don’t let it infect the minds of our mercenary athletes or else they might miss a game-winning shot while pondering the horrors of rape. After all, selfish people are model capitalist citizens; they are undistracted, they are stubborn and they often see the world as a video game with a reset button.

At a bigger school, Bros can get away with hubris, but here, where walls are thin and stories disseminate, the transgressions of an individual do not often go unseen. We’ve all done stupid crap that we’ve paid for, and then we learn to smarten up. When values are shared, this system of mutual evaluation and judgment works. But Bros create a rupture in the value system of this small community by bringing in a wave of destructive thoughtlessness and making it look so appropriate and fun.

They need to be corralled and taught values, but that responsibility belongs to God-knows-who. Usually I don’t call for cultural assimilation, but these Bros aren’t exactly a marginalized group, and they’re really annoying in the library – especially the night before an Econ exam.

Okay, Bro, this last Bud’s for you: I’m not asking you to give $10 to a Haiti fund, or attend a seminar on sexual violence, or talk to someone who doesn’t belong to the superior race. I’m not even asking you to stop using women, or using discriminatory language against people who look or live differently from you, because I know you’ll never listen to that preachy crap. Besides, you’re top of the food chain here. But as long as you refuse your role as a Student and disregard or senselessly offend those who refuse to kowtow to your serial egomania, you will be pigeonholed as brutish and moronic and you will be a nameless stereotype.

I’m asking you to accept your marginalization as long as you continue to isolate yourself in your bubble of undeserved privilege and ignorance. If you just sat down and asked, “Why am I the way I am?” you might actually be able to turn your privilege into something useful and be a good person. Hope for Bros Benefit Show today.

I’ll end by citing a quote in last week’s Voice concerning the new mascot: “Our new mascot is much sportier – it’s more like a big, Division I University.” My response to this Freudian slip is, why didn’t you go to UCONN if you wanted that Division I feel?

Can we not be proud that we have no football team (yet), no pep rallies and no official frats? It’s what makes us Camels. I came here to avoid that type of proximity to the freaky cult of college sports, and suddenly it’s all up in my grill on my Facebook News Feed, telling me the Lacrosse team is 8-0, then 9-0. School pride is one thing, but artificially forcing our college to conform to the ideal “do it all” school where sports are as integral as academics leaves a lot of us asking, “Why did I go to a school that just wants to fit in with the athletic rich kids?”

(Visited 143 times, 1 visits today)

[mc4wp_form id="5878"]