Finding Your Niche

Last week, I decided to ignore all of my moral and ethical beliefs and enter a Final Club party. It was a Friday night, I was completely bored and besides a riveting session with e-mail, no other social opportunities presented themselves. Admittedly, I was a little concerned with how my entrance into one of the clubs would be perceived. Although I know some people who are members of this particular club, they are not really friends of mine or even good acquaintances. In fact, I pride myself on the fact that I am not a part of the "finals club scene" and would never be considered one of those girls who frequent the A.D., the Fox or the Phoenix.

More than anything else, an extreme sense of isolation characterized my night. I recognized people on that general "this person is in my section/ this person rode the shuttle with me/ this person knows my best friend's boyfriend's cousin" level, but none of them were the people with whom I choose to interact daily as friends or colleagues. I could sense people watching me, viewing me as an interloper in their protected little social world. While I clearly understood, even on entering the club, that I would never be a part of this group, I had absolutely no idea of how alone I would feel that night.

Group formation and identity is one of those confusing, complex issues that undergraduates tend to either ignore or leave to abstract, overindulgent conversations in Government or Moral Reasoning Section. Perhaps the only time that students think seriously about group formation and how it applies to their experience at the college is during the dreaded blocking time for first-years in which they scramble to pare down their 30 friends into a legitimate 16-person blocking group. I doubt that this college has ever seen the month of March pass by in the Yard without hurt feelings and irrevocably broken friendships. Yet after this time, few upperclassmen think about how groups are made or even how they might define themselves within the context of a larger group. When asked the question, "How do you identify yourself and your friends," most of the people that I know answer with a vague "I dunno, they are just the people that I hang out with."

Often the groups of people that students choose to associate with derive from artificial and arbitrary categories. These categories are frequently linked to the extracurricular activities that we pursue--for example, students will characterize themselves as jocks, IOP/U.C. politicos, Crimson editors, Diversity and Distinction literati, musicians, a capella junkies or PBHA do-gooder types.

We feel comfortable within these groups specifically because we share a common interest or ability and can sympathize with nightly treks across the river, three-hour community meetings or a writer who forgot to turn a piece. The identity of the individual slowly becomes enmeshed in the identity of the group. Some of my colleagues on the Undergraduate Council completely live, breathe and eat the council, and it becomes very difficult for me to not see them as inextricably tied to student politics.

However, the major problem with this attitude is that it locks individuals into a certain subset of the population. One's identity is automatically assumed as Crimson or Advocate or Republican Club, and all other perspectives or experiences are ignored. People still refer to me as "that U.C. girl," even though my affiliation with the U.C. is only one part of my composite identity.

There are those who may argue that there is nothing wrong with this sort of classification. Many of the students who devote their time to a specific activity do so for a reason. Yet often this identity is so completely dominating that it trumps all forms of difference. Sometimes we do not realize that our group might seem intimidating or strange to outsiders. Barriers are put up, and no efforts at communication are made. Individuals within the group become limited because their ideas or tactics go unchallenged.

As a member of the executive board of the Black Students Association, I have quickly learned to recognize how uncomfortable some of my white friends get at the mention of a BSA event or lecture. I could either ignore their anxieties as a form of racism and choose to identify myself even more strongly with the black community. Or I could listen to their concerns and attempt to explain BSA activities as well as how I perceive the BSA should interact with the larger Harvard community. At that point I would try to harass them to attend a BSA sponsored discussion.

What should be remembered is that we are all members of diverse communities which do not necessarily overlap. Besides our affiliation with the group that we might spend the most time with, many of us are also tutors, club soccer players, House Committee delegates or roommates.

Often the people that we interact with on one level are completely different than those that we interact with on another. The challenge should be to draw on the knowledge that we gain from our different environments in our interactions with various types of people. In this way the exclusionary quality that is often so coupled with group identity can be eliminated. I hope to bring the patience and sense of self-control I've learned by tutoring in Mission Hill to my never-ending BSA and U.C. meetings.

Kamil E. Redmond '00, a Crimson editor, is a Women's Studies and History and Literature joint concentrator living in Pforzheimer House.