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Greek Life at a Medium-Sized University

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“Pastel colored button downs, salmon colored pants, Mercedes Benz’s, and designer bags is the look, if you don’t fit that description you don’t belong there.” was the general opinion of many of my friends when I decided to attend Lehigh University. Having been born and raised in north Bethlehem, my friends had a preconceived notion of Lehigh based on what they observed and heard from other locals when visiting businesses located in South Bethlehem. Thankfully, I never read into what they had to say about the general makeup of Lehigh and decided to attend. Having a sister that was an alumni and a father that wrestled here back when we were still the “Engineers” made me feel more than certain that I would enjoy my time here. I now am in my junior year at Lehigh and have noticed various different kinds of people patterns since my freshman year. I recently read a book written by Rebekah Nathan, a well-known anthropologist. In her eye-opening expose, “My Freshman Year,” she discusses many social patterns and norms that occur on American college campuses. Rebekah Nathan, an alias for the true author, made this happen by going undercover as a student at a large state university. In doing this, she immersed herself into the up to date culture and actions of the typical American college experience. There are many things in Nathan’s text that I can relate to observing here at Lehigh from the minute I stepped on campus. Although I only live a couple miles away, I decided to live on campus. I wanted to have the full college experience and what better way to do so then to immerse myself in freshman resident halls. I would say that I stayed on campus 70% of the time and at home 30% of the time. In doing this, I had managed to be a part of two sociological macros, Lehigh and Bethlehem. Bethlehem unlike Lehigh, is much more financially and ethnically diverse. It is a lot bigger than most Lehigh students think, and for the record we are not all Spanish and or poor. People dress all types of ways and money isn’t a deciding factor for anything. Due to this, I was able to easily observe certain people patterns that occurred on campus because I had something to constantly be comparing it to. The first thing I noticed was the attire many students wore both to class and to parties. The general attire at Lehigh was almost spot on to the description stated above. Almost every other student I passed was decked out in Vineyard Vines and Patagonia, and if you weren’t you were looked at differently. A fellow classmate of mine who attended the same high school as me was scolded about wearing cargo shorts. At first, I was taken aback but now looking back on it I am not. I realized that the kids who dressed like that were doing it for reasons we didn’t quite understand. I had thought long and hard about it and realized that this type of attire was the social norm. Many of these students may have been dressi

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