Have you ever felt alone walking down Locust, or had FOMO seeing the Thursday night parties you couldn’t go to because you had a quiz? Usually, a good hour or two with friends can make the melancholy all go away.
For many students, a good place to start in finding their people can be the 300+ cultural clubs here at Penn. I was happy to know I didn’t have to go far to find “my people,” as they say. But that same melancholy found its way back to me when I realized that the exclusivity that characterizes Penn’s pre-professional culture has found itself all the same in our cultural clubs, too.
Just as I got rejected from a consulting club this semester, I also got rejected from a competitive cultural program. In retrospect, I don’t find fault in these rejections. There can only be too many leaders or program members, after all, and that’s why we have so many of these opportunities. The quantity ensures that both quality and community promised in a cultural club are realized. Instead, how we make sense of fellow members of our community is problematic.
In the pursuit of finding community, we tend to form groups based on what we can relate to each other quickly. Thus come the hastily-formed and ill-conceived cliques. And in the spirit of such journeys, we tend to stay with that community. The unfortunate result of that would then be the divides between ethnicities that make a point to distinguish those born in the U.S. and those who lived in their native country. Considering its prejudicial nature, this doesn’t happen in many cultural clubs, which are open to members regardless of ethnicity. But it is something that is happening.
One may find merits in these cliques and groups — the smaller or more culturally related a group of people is, the greater the possibility of this sense of community being found and positively fostered instantly. In fact, as a Filipino, I hit it off with Filipinos especially fast through a love for dried mangoes and anything else from the Philippines.
But this line of thinking leads us to a dangerous and slippery slope. A slope where we inevitably lead to drawing a line between exclusivity and community. A line that makes us think of how exactly we can measure one being “Filipino enough” or “Asian enough,” and that those who fit those parameters should be your “friends for life.” A group of friends that’ll make you just plain prejudiced.
That might be hard to think of happening, but that’s where we could be headed: against how our ethnicities are supposed to make sense. The ethnicities we’re proud to have as we take our first steps here in Penn are used in the name of “community” to foster an exclusivity unnecessary most of the time. If our community thinks of our ethnicities with such rigidity, then I fear our identities have been misconstrued, and should simply no longer matter anymore.
Instead of viewing our ethnicities and identities as a home open only to a select few, I suggest we think of them as markers or pins on a map. For me, mine says that I’m Filipino: I love Jollibee, eat rice for every meal of the day, and can go for a beach trip any time of the year. It shouldn’t say I only want to be with Filipinos. Just as easily as you can make friends with a Filipino from the Philippines, you can just as simply make friends with a Filipino from America, from Europe, or a person who’s not even Filipino at all.
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Our identities act as testaments to our lives that've been shaped by so many, and it’s perfectly alright for our identities to be different; in fact, that’s what makes Penn such an amazing place to be in. Just as you might be eating lunch with the next generation of startup leaders and consultants, you might also be face-to-face with someone who has a completely different ethnicity or cultural identity (or just the same as yours). The latter is just as important: If you came here to learn and cement your future, it’ll be because of them that you keep on going at the present.
And so, in our pursuit to find our life-long friends here, you might go ahead and ask, “Where are you from?” No matter the answer, carry on with the conversation. Let your relationships revolve not around the answer, but around the conversation. If it goes well, it will. Because in the end, you’ll want someone to be with, genuinely, when that next pang of melancholy comes in.
ADY LOTIVIO is a College first year studying earth and environmental science from Bicol, Philippines. His email is jlotivio@sas.upenn.edu.
