At a time when the proletariat whimpers for economic relief, life still goes on for the elite who are willing and able to dish out extravagant amounts of money for wine, women and song. As the administration continues to valiantly dish out financial aid with the best of intentions, each successive generation of Princeton kids is swiftly integrated into a system of social privileges guaranteed to differentiate them from the rest of the world – qualities that would certainly serve many of them well if their post-graduation jobs in finance were still available. Make of that what you will.
The mid-crisis media fuss about the arrogant attitudes of wealthy bankers and financiers echo the things I’ve been writing about some (though obviously not all) Princetonians since freshman year. And after nearly four years, not that much has changed. It’s still all about the irresponsible, smug, gleeful festivities that reek of elitism. The mess left behind, the detritus strewn all over the place, with full awareness that in the morning somebody — someone else — will clean up after them. The contradictions of identifying into cliques founded upon the principle of making others feel insecure and worthless. And, naturally, the decidedly un-chic froufrou dresses proving that money can’t cure sartorial colorblindness. Bicker, indeed, is symbolic and symptomatic of all the things that trouble me about some Princeton kids: self-glorification, status-consciousness, haughtiness. Qualities, of course, which are familiar enough in the times we live in.
So let’s not pretend that Bicker is anything but a ruthless rejection of those who aren’t conformist enough, rich enough, beautiful enough (though beauty is certainly in the eye of the horse-faced beholder), naked enough, etc. And let’s not simply write it off as an extension of social Balkanization that admittedly is the defining feature of high school life here. This isn’t high school anymore, and there is a real world with consequences beyond FitzRandolph Gate. It’s easy enough for seemingly harmless, puerile revelry to precipitate into complete disregard and contempt for the lives of others, others seen as somehow beneath one’s social standing. The underlying theme of Bicker is the dismissal of those who are dissimilar — for the basest, most superficial of reasons. And of course, the mantra of diversity is laughable when Princetonians self-select into homogenous herds of feral aristocrats on a one-way street to party central. It’s clear that, for some Princetonians, the rarified social world of Bicker doesn’t end after graduation.
College is that strange moment when you discover that you must, like a good existentialist, carve your own path through the world, a moment that often comes with yearning for acceptance and purpose. But it’s possibly the easiest way out to plaster over that insecurity by socializing into groups that elevate your status through stylized rituals of privileged exclusion. And that sense of superiority, the unending belittling of others, easily becomes the entire arc of one’s life. That path amounts to chanting, without any sense of irony or reflexivity, and with a proud twist: Let us eat cake. The French aristocrats had the excuse of ignorance, having enjoyed their feudal privileges at a time when information was scarce. That apology cuts no dialectical ice for Princetonians who are supposed to be the most efficient and intelligent slice of their generation, the future leaders of this and that.
At a time when the responsibilities of that very identity are supposed to fall upon post-pubescent teenagers like a novena, it boggles the mind that so much energy gets squandered on social vanity instead of solutions. And at a time when self-celebration, elitism and irresponsibility are finally loathed as much as garishly made-up girls squashed into togas should be, Bicker seems to be as anachronistic as a brainless bevy of boys in reprehensible striped shirts mooing at the top of their lungs. Make of that what you will.
Johann Loh is a philosophy major from Singapore. He can be reached at loh@princeton.edu.
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