Face it, we all know that Oberlin is a topsy-turvy place. Women turn out to be men, men turn out to be women, straight men turn gay and gay men turn straight, that’s what makes this place so great. This Tuesday at lunch, however, I experienced something that greatly disturbed me and made me realize that in some ways Oberlin’s reversal of roles may not be so great.

I was sitting in Stevenson eating lunch with a bunch of my friends when a guy at the table next to us, clearly a participant in Oberlin College athletics, began yelling incredibly loudly to one of his friends across the cafeteria. My friends and I all grimaced and looked at each other, but said nothing as the shouting continued.

I went to get more food and came back about five minutes later thinking the shouting might have stopped, and it had...for about two minutes, then it began again. Simultaneously, one of my friends and I turned to the gentleman at the table next to us and asked him to stop shouting. He looked offended and replied, “Why is it that everyone all around the cafeteria can yell to their friends and it’s no big deal to you, but when an athlete does it, you have to confront them.” I couldn’t believe my ears! Were we in a parallel universe? Aren’t the non-jocks supposed to be the ones ostracized by the athletes?

I immediately told him that he was being ridiculous, that it had nothing to do with him being an athlete, and that it was simply just a question of common courtesy. He had none of it, he turned to his friends and began mocking our request, whispering to them and asking us if it was okay for him to talk that loud. Most of his friends laughed a little bit, but you could tell they were not behind his course of action.

When he began mocking us, any sympathy I had for him went away. At first I felt a little bad, maybe I had a prejudice in my head about the guy, maybe I was impatient with him because I viewed him unconsciously as a ‘dumb jock.’ This would be quite a revelation for me seeing as my biggest idols in the world are ‘dumb jocks’ such as Tom Brady, Richard Seymour, David Ortiz and Curt Schilling. But when he started mocking us that all went away.

How could someone have the audacity to accuse us of treating him badly because he held the image of a ‘jock’ and then, immediately afterwards, play exactly to the jock stereotype he said we were holding him to? He continued to mock us through the entirety of lunch, mocking us to his friends and occasionally turning to us to make a ‘clever’ or snide comment. For the most part I just sat there shaking my head, perplexed that he could accuse us of stereotyping him and then falling precisely into that stereotype.

On the way out of Stevenson he again confronted me about it, and I again replied cordially that it was not a personal attack on him as an athlete, that I admire athletes and that I played sports in high school. This seemed to change his attitude a little bit, but he still was on the offensive.

Later that evening one of his friends who had been sitting at his table walked by me and apologized for what happened at lunch. He too was a ‘jock’ but acted in a civil and courteous manner to me. This experience just reaffirms what I already had in my head. There really is no one way a ‘jock’ acts; they are just like any other person. Some are nice, smart, friendly and understand how to communicate. Some are insecure and feel like they need to belittle others to patch up their own insecurities.

I think all this stereotyping needs to stop. I hear too many people around Oberlin referring to jocks negatively. We are out of high school, there aren’t jocks anymore, there are just people. Some people are jerks, some aren’t, but it is unfair to them and to us to generalize. Maybe if this particularly loud athlete next to me at Stevenson had never experienced prejudice due to the fact that he is an athlete, he wouldn’t have reacted the way he did.