The few, the proud, the artsy?

For my whole life, I thought I was going to go to college and become a hippie. I was going to have dreads and a nose piercing and walk around barefoot in a long rainbow skirt, writing my poetry in sun-soaked rooms.

Instead, I came to Princeton.

I’m not complaining. Here, I’ve found people who share my love of writing, but I’ve also made friends who care about economics, history, math and so on. I like it that way: Having friends with different interests galvanizes my own. The only bad part about this is that their eyes glaze over when I start talking about poetry.

Having wanted to be a poet for as long as I can remember, I am used to this reaction, but I always hoped that, in college, my unpractical dreams would be encouraged. The scornful reactions of my peers exemplify the typical complaint leveled against Princeton: that we perpetuate — rather than challenge — conformity, a criticism that I, along with many others, have written about before. Administrators know this turns people away from Princeton in the direction of Brown or Yale, a fact which they hate, so they spend a lot of time and money encouraging us to develop our artistic sides. Their latest idea, a collective living program in Mathey that allows 20 student-artists to live together in Edwards Hall, is definitely a step in the right direction. A tight-knit artistic community sounds like exactly what Princeton needs to attract a different kind of student, but in terms of making this a more “arts-friendly” campus, it’s not enough.

Instead of making Princeton a more welcoming school for artists, I feel the Edwards Collective will make inclusion in this community unnecessarily difficult. I’ve written before about my distaste for Bicker and residential colleges, which perpetuate social stratification based off essentially meaningless self-identifiers (Greek connections, number of Barbours owned) or where you were randomly placed your freshman year. I am often frustrated to hear that friends in Mathey receive free poetry books and tickets to poetry events that I do not, simply because I live in Butler. I don’t see how the opportunities created by the Collective will be any different.

I did not join the Collective myself because I had already made plans to live with friends and found this more exciting than living with a group of people I don’t know. Beyond this, though, I didn’t quite understand how sleeping in a room next to a sculptor, a guitar player or a filmmaker would make me a better poet than living next to my best friends, who also happen to be talented and inspiring individuals.

I understand, however, that the Collective says it will be more than just a place to sleep, and let’s say this is true. Let’s say the Collective gives these young artists access to special opportunities and resources, inspiring them and bringing them together. Cool! But what are people like me — just as passionate about their work but not a part of the collective — supposed to do? All this does is present me once again with the feeling that I am missing out on something at this school because I am not a part of the group that gets to partake in it.

Then let’s say it doesn’t work. Let’s say that these talented kids keep painting in the art studios, writing in Small World and don’t really get along. Then the Collective is reduced to a purely social identifier, a cool phrase for a sweatshirt, a way for people to let others know they’re artsy without saying so.

Though I really do hope for the former, I fear the latter will be the case, because the Collective is so unnatural. Forming an “artist collective” first and finding the artists later invalidates the very idea of such a collective in the first place. The ‘Prince’ article about this compares (absurdly) the arts collective to Walden, Hemingway’s Cuba, Matisse’s Saint-Paul-de-Vence, overlooking the fact that these places are famous not because they exist but because of the artists who lived there.

Earlier this year, Phil Mooney wrote a column rolling his eyes at how hard Princeton’s administrators push us to do things with our social lives that make them look good. While Mooney focused mainly on the rush ban, I think that these same complaints about social engineering can be leveled against the Edwards Collective. I worry that the initative’s real purpose is to give Princeton some pretty pictures for admissions brochures and an easy response to those who come to campus, look at the Woodrow Wilson School and say, “But I want to paint! Where will I go?” Then, the Orange Key tour guide can point towards Edwards and say, “There! That’s where the artists are!” Yeah, 20 of them. The rest of us, I guess, don’t count.

Susannah Sharpless is a sophomore from Indianapolis, Ind. She can be reached at ssharple@princeton.edu.