The Anthropology of an Unkindness

BEST WEEK EVER. Such a statement, rendered in all caps and spoken with the naïve earnestness of the Double Rainbow guy, is often written off as hyperbole. However, it is my job to prove to you, loyal Campus reader, that such a statement can be spoken with confidence, without inspiring vitriol, EVERY SINGLE WEEK OF THIS SEMESTER. If I can live up to my heroes, Sam Seaborn and Andrey Tolstoy, I will die a happy person.

In a very real sense, the first week of the semester is the best week ever. You haven’t had the chance to get behind on your homework — even better, you don’t have any yet! You haven’t seen your friends in months, so you haven’t had time to get annoyed by their greetings prefaced with the list of why they are too busy to have more than a two-minute exchange with you or their belief that any argument becomes irrefutable if buffeted by a citation of Plato or Hendrik Hertzberg. Your heart even flutters at the familiar sight of sausage at Proctor, and you aren’t even jaded enough to think of a dirty crack to make about it! There is one reason in particular that makes this week the best week ever:

FRESHMEN STAMPEDE. With all the destruction and sorrow in the world, it is very comforting to know that you can always rely on one thing to never change — first-years will always travel in groups of more than three. Is there a designated term for these packs of first-years? Are they a herd? A gang? A drove? Did you know that a group of ravens is called an unkindness, and a group of crows is called a murder? I would like to start a trend right now of calling these unavoidable packs of first-years an unkindness.

They really should devote more anthropological study to these interesting creatures. Watch an unkindness closely next time they pass you by in front of McCullough.

There are three types of first-years in these groups, which can also be differentiated by names stolen from the animal kingdom and rock band culture. There is the alpha fresh, the student who has the most charisma and the highest SAT scores who could, without question, have been a Feb. There are the groupies, who have chosen this unkindness because this leader was the most appealing. And there is the kid who has to walk on the grass because there is no room on the sidewalk. This kid is the one you need to watch out for. I would bet money that our greatest leaders were once the awkward kid walking on the grass, sometimes having the misfortune to land in that one wet patch of ground at the bottom of Mead Chapel hill that never dries. Obama was once the outlier of an unkindness. James Madison was so the awk one out of all the Founding Fathers. I bet even Ron Liebowitz was forced to take a step off the pavement while at Bucknell University.

The reason that the sight of a freshman unkindness is so wonderful is two-fold. First, the nostalgia brought about by watching these droves of frenetic and nervous energy is pretty wonderful. And no, you were not much cooler than them when you were an alpha fresh those three long years ago.

Second,  looking at those fresh faces, collectively more excited than a pack of cougars at a Justin Bieber concert, makes it impossible not to look ahead and conclude that this year could possibly be the best year ever. Unless you are still the kid on the sidewalk and all the free creemee in the world won’t wash away your sorrows. If so, don’t fret, your best years are yet to come. In the meantime, invest in some waterproof footwear.