The cycle.
Here in MUWCI a theory says that every alternate year, the 2nd years are mean to their 1st years, and every alternate year very good to them. The idea to write about this sprung from our conversation about silly games today. I learned today in class that it actually is an experience that to some people can be rather traumatizing for some people. Traumatizing is a word far to strong. However I think the concept is right. Maria Ché mentioned that it was something that had effected her a lot last year and that it had intimidated her from speaking to some 2nd years. And I know some of my 2nd years felt very strongly about stopping the cycle, so they talked a lot about that. However it feels like it might be continuing. We are the batch that are “supposed” to be mean to their 1st years. We had a student meeting related to this topic, where people at least said that we were going to be nice. However we must ask ourselves are we really?
I heard a lot of people talking about how 1st and 2nd years sit separated in the caf, the 1st years go to bed early and so on. Even the people who are trying to break the cycle by speaking to the 1st years a lot seem to be making this divide between us bigger. This comes out in the discourse, by the fact that 2nd years where are you, why are you sleeping, and are you working already you are just a 1st year.
Why do we do this? Why do we act superior to the 1st years? I don't know why people act superior, nut in some ways I remember how lost I was myself last year, and I do feel somehow much more experienced than most of the 1st years. Superior is not the right word to use though. I think however that the people who needs to emphasize this difference, is also the people who themselves feels intimidated by the 1st years. The cyclical nature of this seems to be repeated, because we as a batch never felt our 2nd years being mean to us. So therefore we do not have the drive to change it, even though we did have a student meeting about this particular subject.
By talking about it, we might actually be creating the problem. The memories we 2nd have from last year are the ones from the end of the year the happy ones about our 2nd years, from the end of the year, where the scary 1st impressions was gone. So by mentioning the cycle over again we might actually be keeping it alive.
is this intimidation necessarily a bad thing. In the community agreement it says that you are not allowed to intimidate other people of the community. But maybe this intimidation that comes out of silly games for example is a good thing it might help some people to break out of their shell. But the action of breaking your shell is something that should be done by yourself not by some intimidating 2nd year.
I don not know how to stop this cycle, if it is the people that experience the cycle in the year they are not "supposed" to, we should just stop talking about it or if we should sit more in circles. Or if it even should be stopped.
I also have the feeling that there seems to be this “cycle”, but I think it happens on a very personal level. When I talked about it with different people from our batch, some said, we were the “mean batch” and some said we would be the “nice batch”. Some of us had really good relationships with our 2nd years and some had no relationships at all. I also remember that some of my 2nd years told me, that they indeed had good relationships with their 3rd years and some were complaining about them. I have the feeling it is hard to generalize in this case, since relationships are something very personal.
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