Aydelotte’s Social Media Weather Report: Niche in Small Liberal Arts Colleges
I’ve been compiling posts that contribute to popular discourse about the insularity of small liberal arts colleges. Their “nicheness” has for the most part on Tumblr received praise. For some, the liberal arts college “bubble” ensures a safe space that galvanizes, not stymies, spiritual growth:
oceansofbliss:
I just want to go back to my liberal arts college where everyone is nice and no one is very discriminatory and I live in a happy bubble of accepting joy
(emphasis added)
gryffindored:
the family that i created through my theatre degree in a small, liberal arts school in new england will never cease to amaze me. in times of tragedy, we are always pulling together and making magic happen.
(emphasis added)
theprettypatriot:
But my private school of less than 2000 is where I learned who I was and what I stood for. I figured out that life was absolutely what you made it, and that at the end of the day you are solely responsible for your happiness. I learned that losers quit when they’re tired and winners quit when they’ve won. Most importantly, I learned that it wasn’t your failures, but how you responded to them that defined you.
(emphasis added)
dandelionbreaks:
“The purpose of a university is to engage in dialogue, debate, and exchange ideas in order to try and come to some meaningful conclusion about an issue at hand. Not to shut ourselves off from ideas we find threatening.” — Charles Negy, Professor, Says Students Showed ‘Religious Arrogance And Bigotry’ In A Letter Later Posted On Reddit, emphasis added
Other students spoke of how liberal arts college’s insularity and small class size was a real and significant factor in the college decision-making process:
sunnystrong:
When conducting my college search, I looked for small liberal arts colleges (because I prefer smaller class sizes, and more interactions with professors) with a strong biological science or neuroscience programs (because I want to study those subjects), and Mount Holyoke ended at the top of my list. (emphasis added)
whatcomesnextisstrange:
Calvin’s general population tends to be the sheltered kind that don’t get out enough to really understand the real world, though as they spend time on Calvin’s campus I hope that that is changing. The students that come that don’t have the Dutch CRC background are slowly making differences, whether it be because the discussions they get into tend to be more political or philosophical, or that the general population of the United States is just getting more and more depressed and therefore hopefully more and more introspective.
... I’ve found great people here, not necessarily the people my parents thought I would find of course, their idea of a good friend is basically a robot anyways.
(emphasis added)
marilyns-child:
Then one day, while I was struggling with my decision between the two, I asked my mom for advice... She told me to apply to our local state university for two years and then I could transfer to a liberal arts college. We fought for days over it, but I eventually gave in.
I never made it to the liberal arts college.
...
I lasted a year and a half in college, following everyone else’s dreams for me. I took sixteen credit hours, worked two jobs, and started on a downward spiral that ended with me crying in a professor’s office, telling him I couldn’t do this, I couldn’t continue on. I was drunk, my hips were bleeding from having cut myself, and I hadn’t eaten in two days. By then, I had changed my degree to English ( “You can be a teacher!”) and there wasn’t a second of college I liked. I was miserable in a state school of thousands of students, being taught by professors who didn’t know me, and studying something I didn’t want to.
...
Sometimes, most of the time, following the money isn’t the answer. Following your heart often is.
(emphasis added)
Several posts delved into how the culture of insularity allowed for more open discourse about sexuality and pornography:
chongthenomad:
the awesome thing about the college I go to is that during one of my classes we were playing two truths and one lie and one girl was listing off the facts about herself and the last thing she said was that she was a stripper, and it turns out she actually was one but the thing is no one had any weird or disgusted or creepy looks on their faces, everyone just smiled and nodded and our amazing teacher even asked her where she worked and then she smiled at her and told her how convenient her job was since the strip club was not too far from campus and wow i really love my school
cyandie:
not being in the insular bubble of liberal arts school for several months now has made me even more vitriolicly opposed to porn because i forgot how average ppl really just talk about it and are so unopen to negotiating why [the industry is] heinous! ...
On the other hand, the same “nicheness” that was praised for bringing about a close-knit community also garnered criticism. Some posts touched upon the “liberal,” “left-ist,” “socially mindful/sensitive” stereotypes of people in liberal arts colleges:
surfcommiesmustdie:
one of my brothers teaches poli-sci at a small liberal arts college in illinois and my dad was telling me he went full cultural marxist. he used to focus on latin american politics but now he’s knee deep in gender stuff and other assorted social justice crap.
i advised disowning him
snout:
person: *holds elevator door open for me*
me: lmaoooo wow, virtue signaling much…? i bet you think youre just SUCH a good person. Oh sorry, did i trigger you? LOL. tough shit, the real world isn’t just a big liberal arts school. uhhh yeah, I’ll take the stairs, THANKS. 😏
Other critiques possessed a less facetious vein, noting the ironic social alienation that such insularity produced:
no-identity-land:
Honestly I’d so love to try and find some new friends or something more through an app or site like Her or Tinder or something, but my campus is ridiculously small and in the middle of nowhere, and my self-esteem can’t handle the thought of rejection (and the inevitability of having to see one of these people all the time on campus) so I’ll just pretend that I’m the one choosing to stay single and save myself the embarrassment lol
(emphasis added, Tagged: lgbt, gay, lesbian)
man-of-prose:
“This is what the real, no-bull- value of your liberal-arts education is supposed to be about: How to keep from going through your comfortable, prosperous, respectable adult life dead, unconscious, a slave to your head and to your natural default-setting of being uniquely, completely, imperially alone, day in and day out.” - David Foster Wallace, emphasis added
Another crucial criticism was the lack of access to the general public about academic theory that such insularity inexplicably reinforce:
hedevitoanditsown:
college/academia and various sub-cultures (punk, metal, regional cultural destinations like Portland, etc.) should not be the only avenues for which we recruit people into radical spaces. ... put your theory into practice and teach people the value of solidarity, mutual aid, etc. these people won’t take communism seriously until you divorce the cold-war rhetoric from the reality. starting up food not bombs in your liberal arts college town full of upper middle class liberals isn’t going to get us very far (not that feeding people who are vulnerable is a bad thing).
...
i think in order for the left to succeed, we need to overcome two major hurdles:
we need to make our theory less confusing and more accessible (breaking news: academia isn’t appealing to a lot of people and neither is theory that’s barely comprehensible. people have more important things going on in their lives, like putting food on their table and caring for their kids/families, than to try and figure out wtf derrida was saying)
we need to actually put our theory into practice (at least the stuff we can immediately, like we don’t need a full-scale revolution to practice mutual aid and democratic decision-making, etc.) and use it to HELP people who actually need it. think black panthers pre-COINTELPRO. because as we’ve seen the political elites of BOTH parties have left the working classes out in the cold to starve, they’re scared and irrational, so fascism is a logical leap for these people.
(emphasis added)
inqilabi:
Women participate in their own silencing. That’s the tragic part. Our own self regulation. We are raised to silence ourselves, become smaller, less visible. Then when women become feminists, you see the same crap… Except it’s got some name of some theory attached, and it’s taught in liberal arts schools or what have you.
Insularity is clearly a multi-faceted topic in discourse about liberal arts college culture on Tumblr. Small class sizes are praised for fostering an often intimate, sympathetic community and opening academic discussion about publicly stigmatized subjects, such as sexuality and porn. Yet, the “nicheness” generated from a tightly knit population does not prevent experiences of social exclusion or loneliness, which students (in this case from the LGBTQIA+ community) have found themselves struggling with. Nor does it solve the issue of general inaccessibility to sociopolitical theory and academics taught in higher education.
