My experiences with various organizations on campus have been positive for they are very accepting and they encourage all types of students to join, regardless of their religious, racial, social or sexual affiliations. In fact, because Queens is so diverse, the makeup of the members is usually surprising (I’m an Asian American and a member of NAACP as well as Haraya, the Pan-African Student Coalition). However, there is no LGBT organization due to St. John’s being a Catholic school. The reason for this is that while the school does advocate nondiscrimination and acceptance, it cannot endorse a lifestyle the church is adamantly against.
The one kind of student that would feel out of place would be one that is very small-minded and opposed to being open-minded. All St. John’s students are accepting of each other and embrace each other’s differences, and a student who cannot do that will find themselves alienated (ironically). Intolerance is not suitable to the St. John’s lifestyle.
Most students wear comfortable clothing to class, but very few dress in pajamas or sloppy attire. Some students dress up due to their involvement in organizations.
At St. John’s, every type of student interacts with every type of student. This is one of the biggest reasons why I love attending St. John’s. I’m an Asian American member of the Voices of Victory Gospel Choir, Mock Trial Team, NAACP, Haraya and in my job as a Resident Assistant. There are no restrictions imposed by the St. John’s community as to where certain people belong. While there is a large portion of, say, Asian Americans in an Asian American sorority or in the school of Pharmacy, if one’s interest lies elsewhere, people are more than happy to bring them into the fold.
The four tables of students in the Dining Hall are comprised of: (1) bright-eyed and bushy-tailed Freshmen who flock together in their mutual excitement to experience college, (2) more serious-minded upperclassmen with their nose in their notebooks, studying for their impending tests, (3) Resident Assistants, who try not to hear the strains of conversations revolving around a drunken Saturday night in the dorms and (4) a large table of friends catching up with each other after a week of having gone missing due to tests and papers.
Most of the students are from New York, but almost half of the students are from out of state. This adds to the diverse atmosphere.
The most prevalent financial background is a working-class socioeconomic background. The reason for this is that St. John’s, despite being a private school, offers substantial financial aid and scholarship in order to offer an affordable, high-quality education to those students who deserve it. Almost every student I know works in addition to class because of their background.
Being a government major, almost all my classmates are politically aware. In fact, I’ve often been caught in the middle of a heated political debate due to tensions running high between liberals and conservatives during elections. I’d say that there is a much larger population of liberals and Democrats than conservatives, but there is a College Republicans organization as well as a College Democrats organization.
Most than once, I’ve heard students speak emphatically about how much they hope to earn in the future, and with the networking opportunities St. John’s provides (such as the Alumni Insider’s View and the Career Center), it’s not too difficult to find internships and establish connections for future employment.