Harrison Burt
Blogs Editor
We’ve all heard the jokes and read the tweets, but to what extent is the “bubble of New Canaan” a true title? For years our community has been stereotyped as an inaccurate representation of what others believe to be the real world, all based upon preconceived beliefs of everyone being rich and somehow morphing into the same kind of person.
As a school, we pride ourselves in our dispersed college matriculation, having sent students off to dozens of states and even some overseas last June. But now that the class of 2012 has moved elsewhere and is experiencing another way of living, what do they have to say about this ongoing typecast?
“I definitely think New Canaan is like the real world; it’s just a smaller version of it. Just because we don’t live in the inner city doesn’t mean this is a fake world,” Krissy Parrett said, who attends Elon University. “We all still have our own problems and struggles, but we’re lucky enough that we don’t have to worry about walking down the street and getting mugged (for the most part).”
Yale freshman Jackson Busch disagreed. “New Canaan is an outlier, but the beauty of college is that nearly everyone has these sort of narrow world views, and that by exchanging them and sharing experiences with others we all come away a little bit wiser, a little more worldly,” he said.
Whether it is “New Canaan Problems” or “the one percent” comments, many New Canaan students agree that the town is a bubble. Lauren Jansen, freshman at Boston University said, “I’ve always considered New Canaan a bubble, mainly because of the lack of diversity. Though it’s not always a bad thing, New Canaan kids do lead a very sheltered life. For example, every Friday in the month of October I would get emergency texts from my school saying there was an armed robbery across from my dorm and they have yet to catch the two guys that keep doing it. If there was an armed robbery in New Canaan, the town would probably be on lock down and in a state of emergency.”
St. Lawrence University freshman Chip Glover agreed that New Canaan is a bubble, but understands people’s outsider perception. “I go to a college that has many students from our area or areas like ours. However, I have been told many times how lucky we are to even be going to college because so many people don’t have the opportunity, and in New Canaan it is the norm,” he said. “I feel that most of us have the world at our fingertips and every resource at our disposal, so I understand why people outside of New Canaan would view our town as a ‘bubble’.”
Alyssa Domino, class of 2012 and is currently taking a gap year to help women in Africa, agreed with the comments, but has continued to experience a bubble. “Tanzania is very religious: 50% Muslim, 50% Christian – nearly 100% fervent believers in a higher power. Coming from a town of atheists, Mormons, Catholics and Jews, and more I could say that Tanzania is somewhat of a religious bubble. I think that by being aware of the New Canaan bubble, or any bubble for that matter, we prepare for and sort of defend ourselves against the differences we will confront once we leave it,” she said.
Regardless of personal opinions regarding New Canaan’s seclusion, most students agree that New Canaan High School prepared them both academically and socially for their experiences beyond NCHS. “NC did prepare me well for my transition into Colgate. That being said, many would argue that Colgate is almost a larger replica of New Canaan,” Greg Brea, class of 2012, said. “Just because we live in an environment that isn’t’ very diverse doesn’t mean we didn’t learn to accept diversity.”
