Hey boys:
First, the freshmen.
I know, I know. It sucks to be a freshman boy. It sucks at most schools, but especially here, where there are no frats, just ultra-exclusive Mods.
It sucks to get turned away from said Mods while you watch your girl friends file in after a word or two with the senior guarding the door. It sucks to admit defeat. It sucks to have to trudge back up to Upper or hop on the Newton bus at 12:30 a.m. after prowling around the Mods and sending out texts to everyone and anyone you know. It really sucks to stay in and watch the Friday and Saturday nights pass by as you play game after game of pong in that one quad on your floor. Water pong, of course.
But soon enough, the tables will turn. Soon, you’ll be the boy stationed at the doors of the Mods with your arms crossed. Soon, you’ll get to dictate how the weekends go.
Which brings me to the notorious senior boys.
I feel like a lot of you have a huge superiority complex stemming from when you were freshmen.
You remember when you weren’t allowed in a lot of the Mods and you remember spending way too many nights in. So, now that you hold the power, you want to make the current freshmen suffer like you did.
But guys, can’t you see? It’s an endless, vicious cycle. It’s a cycle that’s only really fun for the senior boys who guard the Mods and refuse to let in most freshmen boys.
It’s a cycle you can end, though. You have the ability to make the typical freshman boy experience a little less difficult by letting more and more of them into your parties.
If you make the party scene just a little bit better for a few freshman boys, maybe they will make it better for the next generation, and so on. You can start the revolution.
But this letter is about more than just the issues with the Boston College party scene. It has to be-there’s no way I could write 800 words telling upperclassmen boys to let my friends into their parties.
So, let’s move on.
The stereotypical BC bro has been touched upon in the past, but as a relative newcomer to the school I’m still sometimes shocked by the preponderance of pastel and button-downs in the everyday student’s wardrobe.
I’m from a relatively unpreppy suburb of D.C.-I’d never seen a guy wear Bean Boots or Chubbies shorts until I came here. Every day, I’m surprised when I see you guys wearing anything other than t-shirts to class or even to the aforementioned Mods.
So why do you guys do it? Is it just part of your ingrained New England preppiness? Is it something you picked up at Andover or Choate? I don’t hate it, though. It’s a great change from my high school, where the boys wore sweats on sweats. It’s just a little baffling that so many of you guys look so much more put together than I do on a regular basis.
Or maybe it’s the result of a cycle, just like the party scene we discussed earlier. Maybe it’s that you were a little unsure when you arrived here and so you wore what everyone else wore. On the chilly days, you throw on a button-down and maybe a crewneck wool sweater underneath the ubiquitous, puffy black North Face.
Now it’s second semester and it seems like you guys have this getting-dressed thing down to a science. The majority of you look great most days-and exactly the same. Even in the Mods (on the off chance you get into a party), it’s just a mass of identical Bean Boots and pastels.
On that note, my friends and I like to say that you can tell a guy’s personality from whether he wears Beans or Timberlands. This may or may not be true.
Anyway, I have a few parting words to all you boys out there reading this.
Seniors, be nice (or just nicer) to the freshman boys. Remember what it was like to be shivering outside the Mods, wandering around looking for somewhere to go. Take pity on what could be the past version of yourselves. And to all of you, as much as I love the classic Beans/jeans/button-down/Patagonia outfit, it’s okay to mix it up. As philosopher and scholar Dr. Dre once said, “Express yourself!”
