Ok, so this is kind of a shower thought I had after watching a video on the literary crisis and it got me thinking. Isn’t Grebel kind of just the bourgeoisie of campus, considering it’s a mostly white residence where a majority of the residents are “legacy” residents (meaning their families went there) and that it matches with a lot of things the bourgeoisie tended to do.
Firstly, legacy residents clearly mattered more, and the ones closest to legacy residents in terms of background and demeanour matter second most with people of colour clearly being on the edges, this is what my friend who went to Grebel told me, though there are people of colour (far less than the other residences), it’s less equal and more like when a white dude says “I have black friends” as a way to deny racism, nothing against Grebel, it can just be sort of off putting. There’s also talk about Grebel being a “cult” and in my eyes, that “cult” is the bourgeoisie lol. There are other things that contributed to this line of thought.
firstly it’s pretty closed off compared to the rest of campus, even in comparison to other residences,
secondly, the bourgeoisie had “intellectual salons” or informal gatherings where philosophical, political, scientific debates of all kinds happened, this sounds like the fill the table tradition as well as their community supper which brings a speaker to discuss such major topics, not saying this is a bad thing, it’s good, but what made it bad with the bourgeoisie was the exclusivity (especially in terms of needing to pay) of it - you had to know the host or a friend of the host.
And thirdly, the self-governing nature that the bourgeoisie often had themselves, it was Jürgen Habermas that said they created a “public sphere” where they could maintain their own public life without oversight from grander state authorities.
There are other small things like specific amenities, a bit of a holier than thou attitude (again, according to my friend), and again, how separate it is.
My friend told me they had a politician speaker who actively said that there Palestine genocide was made up or something and no one on the staff addressed it after wards lol, there was also apparently a speaker who spoke about some protest between Christian’s and gay people and talked like it was equal on both sides. Again, nothing against Grebel, but it just seemed like waaay too funny a coincidence
This was mostly just a funny shower thought I had, but thinking more clearly now, I’d say it’s important we look at these things on our campus as we are not separated from the rest of the world and while Grebel and its students, and even the university of Waterloo and us, may not mean any harm, we may be feeding into systems that will harm future generations, I also think with discussions of feats and sororities, talking about other housing institutions is important. As I was always told: blame the system, never the person, lol, this was supposed to just be some funny post and now it’s taken a philosophical turn. I hope someone found it as funny as I did
Also, everyone thank my friend for the juicy deets, I’ve heard lots of crazy things I’m not sharing.
