Mimetic Contagion in Hillsdale..... -- Mimetic Theory and Literary Study

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Date Posted: 10:20:18 04/25/08 Fri
Author: Kiernan
Subject: Mimetic Contagion in Hillsdale.....

Wednesday night, I got to see mimetic contagion firsthand in our campus lice "scare." During the day, one girl in McIntyre discovered that she had lice. She returned to the dorm, and had the RAs start checking everyone for lice. Before long, the dorm was claiming that upwards of 40 girls had "confirmed cases" of lice, that more were being discovered all the time, and all the rest of the dorms began checking everyone for lice.

Yet, in reality, only two girls actually had lice.

What an excellent example of the nature of a mimetic crisis! The rumor spread by belief; after hearing that one person was affected, all the other freshmen girls began to believe that they would be affected. Many of the RAs didn't even know what they were looking for. In Olds, we were turning away everyone as clean (which they are, incidentally). In McIntyre, they were telling everyone that they had lice. Yet neither dorm knew exactly what they were looking for until nurses came. They acted instead out of belief McIntyre girls believed that, because one of their girls was affected, they were all *necessarily* affected. And Olds girls claimed that they were all clean because they did not want to end up ostracised the way McIntyre girls would be. They wanted differentiation, a way in which they were different from the infected ones.

Interestly enough, girls were coming out of McIntyre claiming that lice *jumped*. Like a contagion, the girls were sure that just being near the infected one would spread the infection. People began to remember the smallest contact with someone from McIntyre - taking a nap on their bed, hugging, etc.

Though lice was actually the issue at hand, soon rivalry became the actual crisis. Claims like that of "jumping lice" caused the girls to begin to fear each other. Girls here in Olds started fighting, pushing each other away, and refusing to so much as stand near someone who had been told that they had lice. As an RA in Olds, it was all I could do to keep the girls from fighting amongst each other. Each girl seemed to be looking for the culprit so that we could send them out of the dorm and bring peace back to the dorm.

Lice itself could not cause such chaos. Rather, each girl simply had an innate fear of infection; whatever that infection was, they were willing to sacrifice the girl who brought it in order to get rid of the infection.

The only girl in Olds who was told that she had it (in McIntyre) evinced just such a fear of victimage. She kept refusing to give the name of the girl who had it originally - and, according to others, she hid her name out of justified protection, as girls were getting violently angry at her in McIntyre. She also kept telling the Collegian reporter interviewing her that she must "keep her anonymous." She didn't want to be known as the culprit so that she could not be expelled by the crowd. Yet she is a girl who lives in this dorm - fully like everyone else.

Yet she was not the only potential victim. As soon as girls in Olds heard about the lice "epidemic" (yes, that word was actually used), they started to shout out, "I bet McIntyre did it!" They immediately turned to their mimetic rival - a nearly identical dorm (used for freshmen girls, all their friends who are in all their classes) - and scapegoated all their friends in it. Suddenly, those people went from being friends to being lice-infested people who should be ostracised.

The girls were actually suggesting ostracism, quarantine, etc. Interestingly, the Olds girls were more than willing to ostracise themselves. They kepy suggesting locking doors, keeping everyone else out. Like Oedipus, they scapegoated themselves, believing in their own contagion as soon as a girl came back and said that she had lice.

Of course, a cheer went up when a nurse came and rescued us all by dispelling the mythological rumors of contagion. The girls all quietly lined up, as though they were in front of an oracle, and walked off to bed. The Dean's office seemed at a loss to explain the crisis. They just said, "We have two cases of lice. The girls have had treatment and are fine. It is a long story. Basically, rumor spread fast and tensions were high. Maureen Cousin, the College nurse, inspected very carefully. Please spread the word that everything is fine." Their only solution was a positive mimesis - "spread the word that everything is fine."

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Replies:

Re: Mimetic Contagion in Hillsdale..... -- Erin Risch, 18:33:02 04/25/08 Fri
Re: Mimetic Contagion in Hillsdale..... -- Janelle, 20:38:06 04/25/08 Fri
Re: Mimetic Contagion in Hillsdale..... -- Katelyn R., 15:29:41 04/26/08 Sat