Bryn Mawr College Top Questions

Traditions- Parade Night, Lantern Night, Hell Week(Duck Pond Run, Trials, Confinement, Shipley Dance), May Day, and lots of other smaller traditions

The most popular organizations are political ones, especially SGO (student government organization). The least popular are the sports teams. I'm currently most involved in Anime Club. Anime club meets on Friday nights from 7 to 11-ish. We watch from two to six series a semester. Each meeting we watch around 4 episodes of 2 series. I mostly provide the anime for viewing pleasure, so I like to think I'm fairly important. We watch any type of anime, from light humor to dark angst. It's really quite fun. Watching it with an entire group of people making fun of the action is awesome. When in or out of the room? I feel safe having my door entirely open when I'm in it, and while I lock my door, I have a friend who never locks hers. So I feel pretty safe on campus. Athletic events are all buy ignored. The more politically charged the guest speaker, the more of a crowd they are bound to draw. We have a number of theater groups which draw a varying number of people. Dating scene? I've never been interested. I met my closest friends through Customs Week before school starts and through Japanese Class. If I'm awake at 2AM Tuesday, it's either because I have a physics problem set or a paper I've put off due the next day. Bryn Mawr RUNS on Traditions. We have 4 big ones during the entire year: Parade Night, Lantern Night, Hell Week, and May Day. They're all tons of fun. People party as much as they want to,when they want to. We're known as being a sober school, though. Bryn Mawr doesn't have a sorority. Last weekend was Plenary, where we suggest and vote on amendments to the School Constitution and the end of Hell Week, which was great. Saturday nights and drinking have never gone together in my head. The school hosts any number of alternatives during the school year on Saturday nights, though, from stand-up comics, to concerts, and performances of all kinds. Off-campus usually means going to Philly, where there's the Franklin Institute, the Museum of Modern Art, Old City, Penn's Landing, and the sports complexes. It's a big city without feeling like one. If you want to stay in Bryn Mawr, though, there's a GREAT Borders bookstore right next to a pizzarea that has the best-tasting pizza I've ever had. The train will also take you to Ardmore, which is known for having a great deal of high-end stores.

Traditions at BMC are kinda weird, but interesting. A lot of people love them but to me they just seem cultish. I guess it depends on the person. It's funny because the traditions are totally the highlight of the social calendar...right now its February and people are already talking about May day...I'm like hello its in May...! People close their doors at Bryn Mawr and don't come out! People don't chill in the hall. It feels more like a nursing home or a prison than a college. You have to go off campus to party, the only parties at BMC I have been to were really lame. You have to be thoroughly trashed to enjoy them...and even then I just felt like I was in a harem. Swarthmore parties and UPenn parties are decent, Haverford parties are awkward. Theater is big here. Anyone can participate. And the shows are pretty well attended. Lots of girls drink in their room with their friends or don't drink at all. There is no pressure to use substances, and the alcohol policy is really relaxed. That's one great thing about BMC, they let us make our own choices about alcohol. Athletic events are literally non-existent. No one goes to games, its sad really. We have no inter-murals so if you want to play a sport it has to be the varsity team....which pretty much everyone makes who tries out for it. We never win anything...or if we do no one is aware of it. People will make you go to Plenary and SGA meetings...by force if necessary! It's really intense...I usually hide or go away for the weekend on Plenary weekends. They last like six hours on Sundays and its such a waste of time...and you can't leave! Oh and people are really uptight about the Traditions...like if you don't participate in them they will judge you. Dating scene is pretty much non-existent if you are straight. There are many lesbian couples and people are very accepting of them. If a girl has a boyfriend it is probably long distance. I saw a girl wearing a t-shirt: "Bryn Mawr, We'd rather be dead than co-ed!" That's the attitude here...hostile!

I'm involved with a lot of groups on campus, but I guess the one I really like right now is the Bi-College (Haverford and Bryn Mawr) Jewish Student Union. I have never been very religious, I still am not, but it has been really nice to have a group of Jewish Friends, and it was a great way to meet the friends I now have at Haverford. We have a lot of social and volunteer events that I really enjoy. People leave their doors open if they want to be social and close them if not. I don't think its predominantly one way or another. The dating scene is what you make of it. I guess if you're a lesbian its pretty sweet, I don't really know. I've really liked the dating scene because instead of being limited to one school, I've gotten to date guys at Haverford, Swarthmore, Villanova, Wharton, etc, and then at the end of the day I get to go back to my cozy room at Bryn Mawr and do my work without all of the distraction I'd have if the guy lived in my dorm. I also get to avoid all that awkwardness if you break up with someone and have to see them every day on campus. I do so much on the weekends it's hard to generalize, but I always do homework, hang out with my friends, sometimes travel, often go into Philly, hang out at Haverford or Swarthmore, watch movies, volunteer, etc. Saturday nights that don't involve drinking--movie nights with friends, exploring philadelphia, visiting friends at other schools, going out to dinner, really any experience that you can make. I'm off campus all the time. One of my research jobs is off campus, the guy i'm dating is in Philadelphia, I hang out/take classes at other schools, etc.

I don't think that certain clubs or activities predominate. I'm involved with the Chorale, which is a large group of Bryn Mawr and Haverford students and community members that rehearses weekly and sings long choral works. Students often leave their doors open. I met some of my closest friends on my dorm hall as a freshwoman, and others I met during the Customs Week for incoming students. Our longstanding traditions include Lantern Night, in which first-year students receive lanterns and then there is a sing-along including songs in Greek, Hell Week, which is an optional and enjoyable form of hazing for freshwomen, and May Day, a spring festival during which everyone wears white and there is maypole dancing followed by down-with-the-patriarchy dancing. Another annual tradition is the performance of the Vagina Monologues, which is always very popular. Partying is not big and there are no sororities. I don't drink, and on the weekends I enjoy attending performances of various types and watching movies or playing games with my friends.

I think there is a general stereotype that may not be as obvious to some prospective students, but once you're here, you realize that everybody is so involved with the campus groups that it's hard to keep up with everything else as well. We take on a lot, but we get it done. I'm in about five or six groups and most of them are political but there are countless groups on campus to please everybody despite how different people are. The dating scene is lacking a little bit, mostly because it's an all-women college but some girls date guys from Haverford or Swarthmore or sometimes even from Villanova but that's less common. I met my closest friends in my customs group and it's great because they all live right near me. I stay up late and so does my roommate and we get visitors until about 12:30 most weeknights. We're studying but always welcome conversation. I feel like we don't go to many parties but we get together with our best friends every weekend and have fun together in our dorm rooms. Every night dinner is a group outing and it's nice to take a break from studying and talk to friends while eating. The traditions are very popular and looked forward to when they come. As a freshman I appreciate them for bringing the campus together and it definitely adds to the Bryn Mawr experience.

Student government. Field hockey was fun socially. Yes. As popular as a funeral. Guest speakers are better attended than sports events. Same with theater. What dating scene? Through sports, class and dorm life. Smoking. A bunch man, I can't get into it. As much as they can but using the word party as a general term is misrepresenting the activity mawrter's call partying. Their are none. Partied. Watch Indian tap dancing. I live off campus in Philadelphia and spend time grocery shopping and doing laundry.

The Greek Life is non-existent here but for good reason. Frats and sororities at other schools are meant to form ties and meet friends because otherwise it's easy to get lost in the thousands of students. But here, we are a sorority on its own. We have our own traditions and secrets and it's definitely not hard to meet people and make friends.

Sports teams are really popular on campus--they define what your social circle is. Every dorm has a different feel to it. Some of them are open and inviting, and people leave their doors open all the time. Others are really quiet. Dorms really have personalities that never seem to change throughout the years--but there seems to be a dorm for every kind of personality. The dating scene is terrible. It's really hard to meet guys unless you make the effort to get off campus, and even when you do, you get a lot of judgment for being from Bryn Mawr. You really need to prove yourself. Meeting guys at parties is generally pretty pointless, because they won't remember you the next day. A lot of people take classes at Haverford, Swarthmore, or UPenn to get into the co-ed atmosphere and meet people through their academics. But most people just don't make the effort. There are not many parties on campus. If you're going to drink, it'll normally happen with a few friends in a dorm room. People do take the bus to other schools to go to frat parties, but it takes a lot of time and effort, and while a lot of people do it in the fall, it cools down by winter and people just don't want to go out anymore. There are two epic Bryn Mawr parties: Halloween and St. Patrick's Day. There are other smaller parties, but they don't draw as many people.

The four main traditions at Bryn Mawr (Parade Night, Lantern Night, Hell Week, and May Day) are one of my favorite aspects of the school. I feel like these are times in which the whole campus comes together to celebrate the special bond of going to this small, women's college. I think they can be extremely unifying and very fun.

We have great clubs and a thriving student government, plus a close knit community, but I have to be honest and say that if you're into heavy partying, Bryn Mawr is really not the place for you. It's possible to go off campus and party, either at Haverford or Swat, but if you want to stay in and head someplace, it's possible to do it something like three nights a year. I think the social life here is a really mixed bag; I wish someone had been honest with me when I was applying about how truly challenging the all women's aspect of life here is. It's hard to meet men, either to date or in a friendship setting, and although many girls here do have boyfriends or male friends, it's just not something that it's really possible to find without going off campus. There are times when it gets a little suffocating, and I think it's important to branch out and take classes at Haverford or Swat; the mixed-gender experience is an important part of college, and while the women's college thing is fantastic in terms of academics, support, and community, it can be a little hard socially.