Schadenfreude U.

Schadenfreude is an expression meaning pleasure taken from someone else’s misfortune. In the original German, it is literally a conjunction of two words representing different concepts; “schaden” means damage or harm while “freude” means joy. Gary Coleman’s character in the musical “Avenue Q” describes this word best: “Schadenfreude: making me feel glad that I’m not you.”

In a recent column, Chris Troein disagreed with the Editorial Board’s piece that calls for an end to eating club pickups, mainly because hosed sophomores are often hurt by the eating club’s public display of celebration. Troein claims, “When it comes to sophomores’ hurt feelings, picking up new members is not the problem; rejection is the problem.” But rejection and the manifestation of that rejection are intrinsically linked. Rejection would mean nothing if the opposite outcome — being accepted — was not relevant or easily visible in one’s day-to-day life. For example, how much would rejection really hurt if you applied to a school or job that you didn’t actually want and none of your friends were applying? I bet not as much as that Goldman Sachs job or Harvard Medical School. Rejection is not only exacerbated, but also defined by its public display, a display that celebrates those who have been accepted by differentiating them from those that haven’t.

Troein also questioned the status of other campus groups that pick up new members. He claims, “If pickups were to be stopped for one of these groups, the fair course of action would be to stop pickups for all groups.” But pickups for performance groups, etc., are different. How? The answer is simple: size. A cappella groups induct a handful of members each semester; the same goes for dance groups and even Triangle. These pickups have less of an impact on the Princeton community, because the vast majority of students don’t even apply or audition. The number of people affected by a performance group’s admission decisions can be counted on one’s hands and feet. However, about 40 percent — over 500 members — of each sophomore class chooses to bicker. That’s a lot of fingers and toes.

No one doubts that pickups distress many hosed students. However, some, such as Gregor Schubert in an earlier column, go so far as to say that the negative aspects of pickups outweigh the positive. “Public displays of rejection might be essential to uniting the members of some campus organizations, eating clubs being no exception.” I get it. Schadenfreude is a uniting force, one that perpetuates the distinction between being in and being excluded from a group. Schubert’s implication is that abolishing pickups would deprive the clubs of one of their major methods of building club cohesion. While I agree that pickups contribute to a sense of club identity, I believe that this identity is not just the result of pickups, but the interaction between club members throughout the year. Pickups are but a few hours of a single day, so I have trouble believing that the clubs would be affected by any change in pickup policy. Though easily rationalized, pickups are unnecessary.

While pickups and the eating club system are perhaps the most institutionalized form of schadenfreude at Princeton, schadenfreude also exists outside of the realm of social life. It isn’t surprising that we are especially attuned to the grades and performance of others, as virtually all of us have come from highly competitive backgrounds. But is it too bold to assert that we derive joy from the academic failure of others? Consider the moment you finish an exam: Are you more inclined to discuss the test if you did well or if you did badly? Personally, I try to forget bad exams while I am a bit more willing to discuss ones that went well. This isn’t because I am concerned about my self-judgments, but because I use others a reference point in determining my own self-worth. If I believe I did well on a test, I want to know that others did worse.

Given the subjectivity of social worth, the only way to evaluate it is by comparing ourselves to others. There is an old quip: Two men in the woods encounter a bear. One man reaches into his backpack and pulls out a pair of running sneakers. The other man says, “Why are you putting on those shoes? You can’t outrun a bear.” The first man responds, “I don’t have to outrun the bear. I just have to outrun you.” There is no judge or rubric qualified to give us the intrapersonal reassurance we seek, so the best we can do is convince ourselves we are outrunning the other man.

David Mendelsohn is a psychology major from Rockville Center, N.Y. He can be reached at dmendels@princeton.edu.