Bates College

I chose Bates because it was the best school I was recruited for to play my sport at and because they are relativly generous with their financial aid packages. As an aspiring politics major i understood before hand Bates was a left wing institution like most colleges, unfortunatly when i arrived i quickly understood that if you had a differeing opinion from the far, far left you would have to keep quiet in fear of bad grades from your professors and losing your friends. The political opinions of the professors and students are reflected in the bates administrations rabid approach to increasing the racial "diversity" of the school at the cost of the overall academic reputation of the college as these less qualified students drive up the acceptance rate and hurt the college in competitive rankings. But if the thought of one-party-college doesn't bother you that much and you think diversity at the cost of your school getting worse is worth it, here are some other points to understand before you attend bates.

The party scene here is simply bad. I have only been here one semester and i and the majority of my friends are sick of the generick frye street house parties that happen on the weekends. They are usually pretty boring and get shut down within an hour by the crazed campus security force which is under orders by the president of the college to crack down on student drinking. Upperclassmen at bates are particualrly upset that the administration has cancelled several campus wide parties that were traditions for decades in the past.

Another downfall of Bates is that the student body has no school spirit. No one really ever attends the sports games or cares how well they do. Students don't even wear bates clothing around campus.

But the biggest downfall of this colleges is with out a doubt its location in Lewiston, Maine- a rundown mill town that has been struggling with high crime and unemployment for decades. The residents of lewiston dispise bates students and will verbally harass you if they find out you attend the college (this has happened to me 3 times in one semester). For some reason bates thinks the city of lewiston is a selling point for the college and they go out of their way to push this point through. During orientation week upperclassmen led tours of the downtown lewiston area with groups of around 20 freshman each. In my group one of the girls was verbally threatened by a homeless drug addict and then were were collectivly heckled by a group of lewiston somalis. It is also a townie tradition to drive by the bates campus and yell racial slurs at the minority students. What a selling point! Because Lewiston is an awful dangerous town, bates students never leave campus and you will be particualrly trapped if you don't have a car on campus. Students who do have cars often go to portand for the day to escape.

Overall in my opinion, bates is a dying school. It is financially unstable and has the lowest endowmnet out of any of the nescac schools (263 million) but instead of trying to fix the many problems this school has the administration would prefer to focus on social justice and racial diversity because aparently diversity of thought, opinion, and creativity does not matter to them. If you are rich, white, liberal, and from New England you will probably do fine here just make sure you purchase an $1,000 canada goose jacket to fit in and don't leave your dorm room after 10 because you might get attacked by a townie (yes that has happened here as well).

1st Year Male -- Class 1920

Individual Value: A, Surrounding City: F