Every CommonApp personal statement had some convoluted metaphor or hook to, at the very least, prevent the admissions officer from immediately binning your application. Outside of the occasional interview or supplemental essay, it was one of your only chances to speak your truth outside of your grade point average or grades. That you exist as a person outside of the classroom and as a citizen of the world. It gives a character, a voice to those numbers and accolades alone which do not define you as a person. It is a small insight into what you are, and from the admissions officer glancing only around fifteen minutes at your application, they decide if your application gets brought up the chain.
Fifteen minutes. Hell, maybe less. Something that you worked on for months on end, and the only real analysis it receives is a few glances, and your fate is decided then. I’m exaggerating, but the point still stands. Our lives, for some of us months ago, relied on a relatively short glance at what we deemed to be the work of our lives. We were taught from a young age to not judge a book by its cover, but we readily offer up the most sanitized projections of ourselves in the hopes that the covers mask our slight imperfections hidden within the pages. It’s not the most realistic or accurate depiction of ourselves, but we did what had to do to get admitted.
We know that in admissions, judging a book by its cover is unavoidable. There’s no way that Swarthmore Admissions could realistically evaluate in-depth every single one of the 13,065 applicants in the ’23-’24 admissions cycle and finish admitting students on time. Those who were denied to institutions like ours had just the same claim as ours in applying. But what is most important is that everyone had different backgrounds that contributed something to the table. The problem was that everyone had to be judged by a cover that did not fully illustrate who they were, and some had to be cast away, without fully knowing who they were or their potential.
But what is inevitable for admissions is not inevitable everywhere else.
Throughout campus, it appears we have continued this tradition of putting on a cover, immediately generalizing ourselves and others based on these covers, and rushing to conclusions. Let’s be honest: we all once believed that Wharton Hall would be Hogwarts based on that one spam pamphlet, and that Swarthmore was this idyllic place where everyone is one big tight community where there are no huge rifts despite our different backgrounds.
It is not. It is not perfect in the slightest.
Some Cygnet-ed their Marriage Pact matches and may have outright ghosted them based on how they looked. They miss out on what could be an amazing person, and perhaps a glow-up.
In group chats and in gossip, people are throwing wild misinformation and generalizations about people based on what they believe in or off of bad first impressions. Are we really willing to arrive at a conclusion that early?
When people walk by a demonstration, some think they are just a disturbance and only make the days of people worse. No, one cannot fight for change by placing a sign saying “change” in some random place in the Crum Woods and expect change to happen. Movement for change must be visible and unsettle you from the stasis that is the status quo. It’s also what they fervently believe in, and it is important to at least respect their passion for it. Ideas and beliefs are meant to be challenged in a public forum — use the opportunity to engage them and talk (and this is speaking to both students and administrators). There are people behind those ideas.
When some of those participating in a demonstration see people pass by without a glance, some may think that they are complicit in the wrongs they are protesting against through their silence. No, some may have other beliefs or have personal reasons they don’t have to disclose for not participating. As is their right. No one should feel obligated to join anything they don’t consent to. Again, it’s another chance to have dialogue.
When some see an administrator walk by, some shun them instead of saying hello back. What does that do? It just halts conversation and only deepens the divide between the two groups.
When an administrator shuns the students in return, we all devolve into a chaos where we all build walls against each other, and from all sides, everyone is screaming at the top of their lungs with no real dialogue occurring. That being said, the fault does not lie with any one group, administrator, student, or community member alone. It lies with all of us.
All of these initial first impressions lead to a cycle where everyone just shuns each other out and loud voices just overshadow those who feel caught in the middle, fearing to speak because their voice may fall on deaf ears or in fear of retaliation. It creates an atmosphere of distrust and fear.
Behind first impressions and what we may initially see are someone’s dreams, grievances, and who they really are as a person. It’s easy to fall into the trap of immediately coming to a judgment of whether something is black or white, or more accurately, good or bad. Nothing is a binary. Not one idea is a monolith. Everyone is different. We have the greatest opportunity on our laps, and that resides in unprecedented diversity in our community in thought and backgrounds. We shouldn’t let political beliefs or other prejudices immediately characterize how we see people.
Whenever you see someone sitting alone at a table in Narples, offer them a seat. They bring something new to the table. When you disagree with someone on principle, talk to them and understand where they come from. Their upbringing is different from yours: not to be cliche, but put yourselves in others’ shoes. Instead of pushing people away for what you immediately see to be wrong or that you are prejudiced against something, invite them. Perhaps pushing people away will only strengthen their resolve and build more walls. By having dialogue, you understand and see where they come from. The idea behind dialogue is not to change the person, but to understand — changing is only a side benefit.
There are a lot of problems on campus. Nothing will be solved overnight, especially with the heightened political climate nowadays. This is just one step out of a long road in the hopes.
If you haven’t read Wyatt’s piece, you should. It touches on some of the statistics that illustrate a divide on campus. And no, I saying this because, like Wyatt so gracefully said, we all have a yearning, that somewhere over the rainbow, if there is effort on all sides, staff, administrators, students, faculty, and the wider community, there is a glimmer of hope that we can at least make Swarthmore what we once imagined it to be.
That the cover we once made on our applications can be truly realized and we can shed it for who we truly are. And a glimmer of hope, at least for me, is all I need. It’s what we all relied on when we applied to college.
So yes, like I once did when I applied to this school a while ago, I dare to dream. I dare to dream, even if it is far-fetched, that we can truly understand each other through dialogue and conversation, where we cast off these covers and know each other by who we really are, that in our diversity, we derive our campus family.
