This is an out-of-class activity completed by HSTEM students in response to the reading materials provided. Here, an HSTEM student’s responses to this activity are shown as a sample of what an HSTEM instructor may expect.

Materials

1. When Birds of a Feather Don’t Flock Together: An Intersectional Approach to the Study of Friendship at an Elite Liberal Arts College. Jeremy Margolis ’19, Amherst College Sociology thesis supervised by Leah Schmalzbauer
   • Introduction (1-32)
   • Chapter 5. Conclusion (109-116)

Jigsaw Reading (read and complete summary, reflection, and quote pulling for just the chapter assigned to you.)

1. When Birds of a Feather Don’t Flock Together. Margolis Jeremy.
   • Chapter 2: Introducing the Pathway System (33-55)
   • Chapter 3: Life on a Pathway: Experiences of Homogeneity (56-87)
   • Chapter 4: Life outside the Pathways: Experiences of Heterogeneity (88-108)

Beginning of Module Work

Please complete these to help build your academic foundation and prepare for active participation during our discussion.

Part 1: Summary

Please capture, using bullet points, your top 2-3 key points for each article.

Introduction:

• Introduced to Brian and Alex (asian americans) that have opposite friend groups
• Exposes elite colleges: low-income non-white students have greater social, emotional, and academic obstacles that white students do not experience
• Questions whether diversity is working at elite colleges
  • Investigate friendship formation
• Study of friendship (institutional structure)
• Students trying to make sense of that structure/navigate it while they’re trying to make sense of themselves
• 3 pathways: Varsity pathway, the club pathway, and the affinity pathway
  • Varsity; race: white, social class: upper white, athletic status: varsity
  • Club pathway; Race: white, social class: upper middle, athletic status: club, none
  • Affinity pathways; Race/social class: 1) black and low income or middle class 2) asian and middle or upper-middle class; athletic status: none
• Pathways cater only a fraction of potential identity intersections
• Roots of Self-Segregation
  • Friendships are a consequence of the groups you are part of
  • Similarities in background lead to feelings of compatibility

Chapter 2:

• The pathways
  • Structures the social lives of Amherst students (socially, residentiallu, and extracurricularly
  • Analyze the friendships heterogeneity: percent same-race friends, percent same POC- status friends, percent same athletic- status friends, and percent same intersection friends
• Fraternities matter because they have set the standard as the vehicle through which students achieve the classic college experience
  • When amherst got rid of frats, it got replaced with athletics
• Importance of athletic competition led to growing intensity of athletic recruitment
  • Athletic cultivation is expensive, time-consuming, and class-coded
• Students mostly join club teams for social rather than athletic reasons

Chapter 5:

• When students interact and form friendships across demographic difference they benefit academically and interpersonally
  • This doesn’t typically happen
• Solution: break up the pathway system
• Admissions engineering approach
  • Accept less white upper-class students and recruit more diverse students
• Justin Serpone recruits half white half POC
• Long term plan (10-20 years from now)
• Decrease the percentage of recruited athletes
• Eliminate certain teams??
  • Said it’s hard for ice hockey to recruit POC but debatably Women’s Ice Hcoeky is the best athletic team at this school
• “Some NESCAC schools have varsity teams that Amehrst doesn’t have, such as crew sailing and water polo. Eliminating predominantly white teams would shrink the varsity pathway constituency…” 113
  • Sailing and crew are very expensive sports (white affluent teams)
• Discontinue admissions preference for legacy applicants
  • interesting take but it also has an effect on donors
• Amherst is capable of diminishing the number of affluent, white non-athletes that it admits because of the big endowment

Part 2: Reflection

Introduction

I find it intriguing that the effectiveness of diversity in elite colleges is often assessed through the lens of friendship formation. Reflecting on my own experiences, I can’t help but notice the stark contrast between my friend groups from home and those I’ve formed in college. Back home, my circle primarily consisted of Argentinians or individuals from Latino households, largely because our families shared a history of immigration and the challenges of adapting to a new country and the shared cultural differences we experience. This common ground bonded us together. Now, in college, I find myself contemplating the concept of the “Varsity Pathway,” where many of my closest friends are either teammates or peers from other athletic teams. This concept resonates with the broader exploration of friendship dynamics within the institutional structure of elite colleges.

Chapter 2

This chapter has been very enlightening for me because I am realizing that I am a part of the Varsity pathway. Everything I am reading feels very true. I tell my friends from home that “no we don’t have frats but athletics lead the social life here”. I never thought of it in this way before but being a part of a sports team it is a hierarchy. I also have read fizz posts before of people saying “do athletes wear their amherst athletic clothes to show their better than everyone or because they have no style”. This probably describes how a lot of students view athletes at this school and being one, I have not only been guilty of doing this, but also blind to the effects of it.

Chapter 5

In the conclusion, Jeremy suggests that the solution to help make campuses more socially integrated is to break up the pathway system. However, I think this solution is naive and very difficult to implement since there are so many influences in admissions. I think Athletics is a desirable part of college education and getting rid of the possibility of having good athletics would have a negative impact. I also think that it is very difficult to get rid of a structure that has been implemented in so many different universities across the country that is seen as the “college experience”. By this I mean frats and how athletics at Amherst have taken over that roll. I think that this would make the school desirable to certain students and very undesirable to others. Another quick note: It’s difficult to recruit athletes of low-income etc bc NCAA doesn’t allow D3 to give out scholarships – makes me think about how the NCAA is a part of the problem too.