Social Adjustment College Life

Establishing oneself as a member of the college society is a complicated process and, at best, a gradual one. Adapting to a new world is a difficult task for most people and especially for those of college age, whose lives are burdened with physiological and psychological, social, educational, and emotional adjustments which tend to absorb much of their energies. Furthermore, a college community is a rather formidable new world to face, with its special standards and mores and its considerable authority. College life in the United States is highly organized and competitive, and the scheme of things at Yale, a relatively large university devoting much attention to undergraduate affairs, is not an exception to this rule. With its residential colleges, fraternities, and senior societies, its numerous student activities and high scholastic standards, Yale is a community which makes insistent demands upon its members.

Recognition, acceptance, and approval by the group are, of course, the social objectives of all students, for such acceptance represents a long step, in any society, toward security for most individuals. What constitutes suitable recognition varies from individual to individual, depending upon his own goals and upon his sensitivity to the conventions of the group. Some are content with the company of a few friends or the approval of their teachers. Others seek the companionship of fellow students, endowed in their opinion with particular prestige--the athletic, the literary, the fashionable, or the politically powerful. As in other societies, there are at Yale certain commonly accepted badges of social recognition. Conspicuous among them is membership in fraternities and in senior societies, based on election--thus giving potent evidence of group approval. There have always been rebels against these symbols of success; and perhaps the development of residential colleges has subtracted from the universality with which they are accepted as symbols. None the less, they remain important factors in the lives of many students and they are typical, in their impact on individuals, of the way in which all comparable forms of social recognition operate.

Recognition at Yale comes in many ways--through accident, influence, and friendship, as well as through achievement. But "achievement" is a characteristic standard for success at Yale, and participation in an important extra-curricular activity is a vital touchstone for acceptance into most student groups. While at Yale, as elsewhere, the cards are stacked somewhat in favor of the boy from a good private school, whose college life is made easier by his acquaintance with others from his school or family circle, the group at Yale is persistently willing to grant full approval to the boy from a small school or high school, whose energy and capacity for leadership carry him to the top in athletics, or school journalism, or one of the business enterprises operated by self-supporting students. The development of residential colleges at Yale promises to enlarge the importance of this element in Yale life. For under the college system student activities have multiplied, with the creation of college teams, magazines, print shops, music clubs, and so on. These activities offer an independent source of pleasure and companionship, making fraternity elections and the like less important, especially to non-fraternity students.
The formation and growth of prestige-carrying groups begin as soon as students enter college and continue steadily until they leave. At each stage of the college cycle the organization of such groups differs. In the freshman year, when fraternities are not open to students, the groundwork is laid for future recognition. The symbols of success vary, but in order to obtain later approval and security the entering student must reach out toward the group. Some follow the conventional pattern of behavior instinctively; others evaluate, rather self-consciously, the mores and the demands of the society and decide how they will act. Those who wish to be popular, to gain positions of influence and the social rewards connected with them, choose their activities with care and direct their efforts in an organized way toward their goals. Help in this process often comes from school friends, a year or two advanced, who indicate which dormitories are socially desirable and which activities most valued.

Whether they act through instinct or calculation, these students begin early in freshman year to make themselves a working part of the society. They "heel" the News or team managerships, go out for class teams and clubs, participate in some recognized athletic or recreational or civic activity. Through activity or association with a recognized clique, a student feels himself "belonging" to the college community. The cliques themselves are formed in various ways. Boys from the same school constitute the nucleus of such groups, the strong helping the weak, and all drawing prestige from the successes of a few members. Cliques form in order to exploit common interests. Those with pretensions to fashionableness find refuge from the common activities of the group at large in their association; habits of association and friendship develop among acquaintances made in class or on the playing field. New members are added to each group and old ones fall away as interests and activities change. As the process of reaching out toward the community and of attempting to gain security through membership in an approved group goes on, reputations are made. And at the end of freshman year the informal and often fluid classifications of the early period crystallize into more permanent form. In the beginning of sophomore year, fraternities elect and reject; teams and clubs are formed; the athletes, the intellectuals, the week-enders, and others become more or less distinct circles. At the end of junior year, an event occurs in the college which is for many students the climax of their competition for social recognition--the election of members by the senior societies, ninety out of a class of about five hundred being chosen, and perhaps three or four hundred appearing at the ceremony of election. By this time many have found in the community a place which satisfies their ambition and their need for approval. Others, having failed to do so, may have reconciled themselves to lesser satisfactions or found other interests, or they may feel rejected, dissatisfied, and emotionally disturbed. Many students who are not readily accepted into college groups through friends, special talent, or social position, find the job of achieving a place a drain on their emotional resources. Others, insecure in their novel surroundings, discover that a disturbance in any part of their lives is soon reflected in a disturbance of their social relationship to the group.

Taken together, the institutions, attitudes, and people who make up the undergraduate society constitute a complete order of values which it is almost impossible to escape. At some time in their college careers all but the most exceptionally independent Yale students measure the success of their careers in terms of these characteristic standards of success. Those who have been unable to win tangible approval often find recognition of the fact a shock, involving discouragement with themselves or disillusion with Yale standards.