We’ve all heard the saying “Freshmen stink,” but I have personally never really given it a second thought because it never really seemed to be anything but innocent fun.
Every senior starts at the bottom as a freshman and then finally works his or her way up to being the rulers of the school. Being able to tell the freshmen that they are lame compared to the upperclassmen is basically a right of passage; except that’s about as far as it goes.
At Kutztown there’s never any cliché locker stuffing, swirly-giving, or freshmen being warned about the big bad bully, and I wonder: Did that even make it past the 1960s? Of course there’s some who may not like the freshmen class, but hey, nobody is going to like everybody.
After talking with freshmen Cheyenne Gerow and Jack Bortz, they seemed to be on the same page. “I’m friends with a bunch [of upperclassmen] so I’m not exactly intimidated by any,” Cheyenne explained. “I’ve heard people complaining about the freshmen so I sometimes feel like it’s a scene where everyone doesn’t like us, but I think some people just think our grade is dumb, but not all of it.”
All Jack had to say was: “Everyone is really nice and seem to like us because we’re okay because we’re really nice and cool and get things done.”
I wanted to know what someone older may think about the freshmen class, and so I asked junior Leah Dietrich. “I really enjoy having your freshmen class around,” Leah said. “They have some understanding of respect and haven’t really done anything remotely immature or disrespectful.”
All in all it seems Kutztown surpassed the locker stuffing activity a few decades ago when suspenders weren’t only worn by hipsters. In all seriousness, even though being called a freshman will never be something someone looks forward to, it’s just the name and not something that defines a class, and Kutztown is proof of that. I, for one, think it’s pretty great that we’re not a type of high school that a T.V. show gets based off of with cliques, bullies and every other stereotypical character.
cougarmedia 