NOT FOR NOTHIN': Great pressure to conform

Standing at the intersection Ithan is a group of girls: all with straightened hair, tight leggings, trendy boots, shirt-length dresses and  Vera Bradley bags.  

The trends have changed somewhat in the past four years, but the general picture has not, at least since I have been crossing at that light.  Villanova students are pretty uniform. 

We have similar clothing, laptops and blackberries, ways of communicating, ideas of faith and even experiences. We pride ourselves in our tight-knit community, but we form a cultural group with relative ease, having grown up in similar geographic areas, most with analogous socioeconomic backgrounds and family lives. 

For all those students who have not come from the same class, background or private school, however, is there a need to match up?  

It seems the answer is yes. Conformity is normative at Villanova. Perhaps the majority of Villanova students see nothing wrong with this — celebrate it even.  Having grown up in Catholic schools, wearing uniforms themselves, unique dress may be a rarity and alternative forms of expression a silly charade.But there is something lost in the pressure to conform among the student body. 

For one, we have gained a reputation for being an artless school. Not just in class offerings, but in that spontaneous creation, expression and statement-making on the part of students. We shy away from public displays of individuality, from flashy or diverse dress.  

Villanova recently hosted a student Art exhibition that, while displaying great talent, had minimal entries and few students attend.  Art is generally created behind closed dorm room doors. 

Meanwhile, students who have an impulse to dye their hair a bright color, go to class with paint on their clothing or wear all black find life at Villanova is simply easier if they refrain. 

Creative impulse is roped in because it's just not the time and place for it here at Villanova.  

This is a place to engage in campus ministry, volunteer at the Special Olympics, play intramurals, earn good grades, go to grab-a-dates and join a set of widely accepted on-campus groups. Many of us find ourselves putting creative endeavors on a backburner until Villanova life is finished. 

Why do we feel the need to segregate this creative non-conformity from our lives here, and what comes of those students who rely on their creative expression to survive college life?It seems it has something to do with the way those students who fall so easily into the mainstream expect to be affirmed by others' "normalcy."

I was recently walking with a friend who has corn-rowed his long hair. He is white.  He also has a beard.  Suffice it to say, he does not resemble your typical Villanovan. We passed two female students in the quad who nearly tripped over themselves while staring. They laughed an obnoxious cackle of disapproval. 

But their laugh is accepted and their behavior condoned on the social front line here. 

These kinds of people keep those on the periphery at Villanova from wandering too far astray, all the while making the quad a  hostile territory.

 For many students on campus, it is difficult to be themselves.

To aggravate this alienation, the socially accepted attitude on campus is the affirmation — of the University and most everything it stands for.  There is a large group of students happy to express their love of Villanova and their undying school spirit. 

But all those students who cannot affirm every aspect of life here experience serious pressure to join in what amounts to a band of Villanova mascots, which becomes shortsighted about anything that might not be "just grand" about Villanova University.  

But students who do not feel the need to join in as number-one fans on the sidelines may feel lost in an awkward, lonely margin, unable to relate to all this Villanova fanfare.