Has Berkeley gone corporate?
We’re known for having a foundation of progressiveness that created the free speech movement, Third World Liberation Front and Joan Didion — kind of. However, this history of advancement doesn’t make the university or its new values and actions unimpeachable. Us dummies may not realize this, but the very institution that once made space for all this progressive hippy dippy is now eating it alive.
Look at how campus has expanded enrollment and expected the city to absorb infrastructure costs, inflating housing prices. This shift in Berkeley’s city culture with the additional influx of students has shifted the school’s sprezzatura towards a Silicon Valley-esque, bureaucratic hellhole.
This expansion of students, increased capitalistic doom and neglect for the preservation of the city’s roots has introduced a new, slightly confusing attribute into the mix of our city: hustle culture.
We see it everywhere we look. The first weeks of the semester, Sproul is covered with consulting clubs, waiting to snatch you up and feed you to corporations. The weeks following, campus is covered with underclassmen in suits walking to their interviews, stressed out of their minds trying to fit themselves into this rat race. I am so sorry to inform you that this is not normal at other schools. Competitiveness might be an inseparable part of going to a prestigious institution, but is that what makes Berkeley, Berkeley?
Well, nowadays, it unfortunately is. We can’t run away from hustle culture and consulting clubs. We just can’t! There are too many people who regularly dress in business casual attire and grey quarter-zips for us to keep saying that Berkeley is a hippy-dippy wonderland where all the power is in the hands of the people.
The truth is that we operate within a deeply hierarchical institution, and have been doing so for a while. As a result, it shouldn’t be shocking that hierarchical values have seeped into our social scene as well. A large part of these bureaucratic values I see projected throughout campus are the power dynamics that lie within our student groups.
The most obvious example of this is hazing culture. Despite my fear of sounding painfully trite, you shouldn’t be hazed for wanting to join a group of people with whom you share academic or recreational goals with — hot take, I know. While we can all point and laugh at the absurdity of being hazed for something like a mahjong club or whatever, normalizing the degradation of newcomers builds a foundation for a hostile school community.
Obviously, club hazing isn’t what’s at the top of our minds when we think about the concept. It’s the fraternities. It’s no secret that frat pledges, allegedly, have to go through emotional, physical and sometimes even vaguely sexual abuse just to get a little buzz on. But forget about those poor bastards, that’s only the setup to what I’m about to complain about.
See, we ladies have a little bit more class when it comes to this stuff. Sororities don’t really do all of that. But because we live within the broader bureaucratic bubble of Berkeley, there are, of course, hierarchies within the house. And since I’m a freshman (barf), all I’ve ever known is being on the receiving end of this spanking.
I was once told sitting in a chapter meeting by a noble junior, “There’s a power dynamic, freshman; pay attention to it.” And you know what, tell ‘em girl.
I understand seniority. I’m not here to say that it doesn’t have a place anywhere in our society. You know me, I would never say that. Or would I?
Ok, new paragraph. Have you heard of a big? She serves as your guide into Greek life and is the most important elder in your house to you. It’s like a mom you have to woo in order for her to adopt you. Now my big is perfect — I’ve always said that and I always will. But the “big-little” dynamics are weird, and you can’t tell me they aren’t.
It becomes clear that some hierarchical malarkey has been instilled into sororities when you actually have girls getting nervous to talk to people a year older than them — that’s just absurd. Aren’t these senior citizens supposed to be my friends? Why are they being treated like my elders with a power dynamic that I need to “pay attention to”?
This built-in initial fear of your seniors is largely talked about, yet its root is never spoken to. It’s the differentiation between who has earned their place and who hasn’t — hierarchy. It’s everywhere we look in Greek life, from the second we are informed about house rankings during rush to when we actually join a house and are told to not get too comfortable. This need to sort and place people into boxes in order to determine their value or respect isn’t exclusively an aspect of Greek life: it’s everywhere else on campus too. However, sororities, frats, clubs and even individuals themselves did not create this culture. We are all products of what we were dealt on a real level.
The truth is, we can’t escape hierarchy. You know it, I know it, even my editor Safwat knows it. It’s been embedded into Berkeley at every level, from the way that business majors at Haas look at you funny to the way we compare our LinkedIn profiles to others. When a whole culture is built around sorting people by their perceived value, we can’t be surprised when that same energy bleeds into our friend groups, our clubs and even our sisterhoods. That’s right, I said it.
So let’s just all relax, remember our radical predecessors that preached peace and love and maybe think twice before going absolutely feral on a pledge.