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Colby's Rejection of the Arts
How Colby College fosters an anti-academic enviorment
While appearing to greatly value academics and arts, the administration of Colby College has, perhaps inadvertently, fostered an extremely anti-intellectual environment immensely hostile to both arts and academics.
Part One: Problems
The first and major factor to this is the rampant elitism caused by the wealth of the student body. User sweetthang13542 verbalized this problem on a post on the College Confidential Forum:
This statement, at first glance, may appear to be a gross over-exaggeration. However, it is surprisingly close to being accurate. Her statement "Half of the students come from the top 1%" isn't too far off; a study by the New York Times found that 20% of Colby students hail from the top 1%. This same study revealed the stark truth regarding the true wealth of the student body (shown below)
The wealth of the student body - while directly counter to the college's supposed commitment to financial aid - is also combined (and perhaps the cause of) a expansive anti-academic and party culture.
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The amount of alcohol consumed at Colby is a well-known facet of the college's experience. A quick google of "colby college alcohol arrests" yields pages upon pages of incidents. And The Princeton Review, a website basing its rankings off student surveys, listed Colby as the 7th school in the US where beer is the most consumed. This is above colleges famed for their drinking culture, such as Syracuse and the University of Alabama.
Most students would agree that this issue stems not from any college policy, but from the culture of the students. The following exerpt is from a College Confidential post by user spurs43cali:
Though the college is attempting to crack down on these underground fraternities, the fact is that the fraternities are not the problem but a symptom of the problem. The root cause for this seems to be the type of student Colby admissions prioritizes.
This prevalence of anti-academic, hard-partying student athletes creates an environment that completely alienates students who lean more artsy or intellectual. The below excerpt is from user "Jordan" of the college appraisal website Unigo:
To the right is another bad experience at Colby from a user on Niche.com. It echos a very similar theme of a social scene dominated by preppy student athletes, which creates an environment which most likely deters the most talented students in the arts, sciences, and humanities.
As many of these users mention, this anti-art and anti-academic culture seems to be correlated with two aspects: wealthy students and student athletes. Evidence suggests, however, that these two groups (wealthy students and student athletes) could perhaps be one and the same. Below is a expert from a report on athletics at Amherst College, an institution very similar to Colby.
Along with being directly associated with wealth, exclusion, and the upper 1%, being an athlete at a NESCAC yields a disproportionate and unfair networking advantage, not unlike the fraternities that Colby banned partially for this reason.
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Shown is a wallstreetoasis.com post from someone who works at an EB firm, discussing the unfair advantage student athletes receive.
Source: https://www.wallstreetoasis.com/forum/investment-banking/is-there-value-in-a-varsity-athlete
And athletics aren't the only way the Colby administration favors the extremely wealthy. It's well known that Colby College is both need-aware and legacy-aware when considering potential applicants. It is worth noting that Colby College is one of the only traditionally prestigious colleges still practicing a need-aware policy.
Source: https://afa.colby.edu/apply/faq/
Part 2: Potential Solutions
This culture of elitism and hard drinking has a few simple solutions. First and foremost, the college should immediately drop it's legacy and need-aware policies. Amherst College, an elite institution very similar to Colby, recently did exactly this; the results were nothing but positive. A excerpt from a Inside Higher Education article in shown to the right.
Another potential solution would be to eliminate the preferences for student athletes in Colby's admissions process. As mentioned previously, it's no secret that most of this toxic culture stems from Colby's athletic teams. Forcing the administration to select future students purely on academic merit would greatly reduce the culture hostile to the arts that permeates Colby's campus.
Thus, the college should prioritize fostering an environment that art-inclined and low-income students feel comfortable in. The college should make a coordinated effort to move the school's culture away from athletics, drinking, and partying.
We also request that Colby ends its legacy, need-aware and athletic preferences in its admissions process.
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There may be understandable reasons why the college is unable to do this; however, if this is the case, we request that the college be transparent and publicly state those reasons.
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Until this happens, we advise people donating in the fields of academics, arts, or financial aid to cease their donations, as their donations appear to be building a culture that goes against the aforementioned values.
Below are links to additional material on the topic​
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