The Bucknellian

El McCabe

Senior Writer

Everyone knows that the University’s culture places a high value on Greek life and rush at the beginning of sophomore year. First-years are aware of the importance of sororities and fraternities very early in their college careers and are rapidly exposed to the pros and cons of Greek life essentially every weekend.

Even though this exposure happens so quickly, there is still a lot that first-years do not know about the rush process and what it’s truly like to “go Greek.” Mandatory information sessions, appropriately dubbed Sorority 101 and Fraternity 101, seek to fill in these gaps for first-years and attempt to provide a holistic view of Greek culture before first-years decide to rush.

On paper, these information sessions certainly sound beneficial and necessary. Yet, after attending the first Sorority 101 session, I found myself as indecisive as ever. All the sororities were given approximately five minutes to speak and tell us their key values and initiatives of their respective chapters, and they all quickly began to blend together. All of the girls speaking clearly loved their sororities and philanthropies, but this universal excitement made it difficult for any one in particular to stand out against the rest. This inability to discern between the Greek organizations and their personalities appears to be a much larger source of stress for women as opposed to men, and I sincerely hope the coming information sessions will help first-year women choose the right sorority for them. After asking multiple upperclassmen who have been through rush, the universal answer is that “the system works itself out.” After going through an intense and thorough week of rush, everyone supposedly winds up where they would be happiest, even if they are initially disappointed with their bids.

My best advice for those who will be attending the upcoming information sessions and participating in rush week in the fall is to keep an open mind and not to stress out too much about the future. The decision about whether or not to rush is a big decision and cannot be made overnight. I firmly believe that it can’t hurt to go to a few information sessions regardless of how helpful or unhelpful they are in discerning the sororities and fraternities. Remember, it is perfectly okay not to rush or to end up somewhere you were not initially hoping for. After all, a lot can happen in the four months from now until fall rush, and your opinions on it will likely swing back and forth. Hopefully future Sorority 101 and Fraternity 101 sessions will help clear up the uncertainty of this process.

Justin Marinelli

Senior Writer

We have been raised from birth not to judge people by their external appearances and to judge them only by the content of their character. I do agree with this point, but I find it to be simplistic and ignorant of certain nuances. To a fair degree, it is not only acceptable to judge a person by his or her appearance, but wise to do so.

Surely it seems wrong to judge a book by its cover, but actually, the quality of the cover is oftentimes influenced by the quality of the text inside. The trick is simply identifying when this happens to be the case.

To understand my point, you have to define attractiveness by two categories: genetic and cultivated. Things like height, facial structure and relative proportions all fall under genetic attractiveness. There is nothing a person can do about factors like these and so it is useless to judge someone’s character based on these characteristics.

Cultivated attractiveness is a different story. This is a much broader category, but essentially any physical trait that you control falls under this category. Someone’s hairstyle, choice of clothing and degree of facial hair are all examples of factors that contribute to cultivated attractiveness. 

This is why it is perfectly acceptable to judge someone based on cultivated attractiveness.  It is completely under that person’s control, and thus the way that person chooses to present himself or herself is an expression of his or her personality. There is no end to the subtleties that present themselves in this dynamic, but for now I shall only examine what it means to have a high degree of cultivated attractiveness.

For most of us, it takes a bit of work to make ourselves look attractive. It’s easy to let yourself go and give up on how you look. Eating healthy, going to the gym and keeping your hair clean and presentable requires a certain amount of discipline and self-control. People with a high degree of cultivated attractiveness thus also have a high degree of discipline and self-control.

So what of someone who is very disciplined but cares not for his or her appearance? For one, I doubt that person exists outside of exceedingly rare circumstances, but I digress. In this case, what that person lacks is pride for how he or she looks, which, by extension, almost always means that said person lacks pride in himself or herself. Cultivated attractiveness is thus an effective barometer for how much pride someone takes in his or her being.

Finally, in order to successfully cultivate attractiveness within yourself, you must have a reasonably good idea of what will make you more attractive and what will not. To be able to accurately choose hairstyles, perfumes or clothing that will suit you, you need to possess a good sense of self-awareness. You can’t have cultivated attractiveness without self-awareness unless you have someone telling you what to do, which is another exceedingly rare circumstance.

Because we so often tend to conflate genetic attractiveness with cultivated attractiveness, we find ourselves trapped in a paradigm in which we cannot discern anything meaningful.  Once we realize the difference between the two, we find ourselves better equipped to understand the intricacies of the world we live in. Deny this reality and all you do is make life harder for yourself.