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Sarokrae comments on Harry Potter and the Methods of Rationality discussion thread, part 9 - Less Wrong
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Well, these days college intake is fairly mixed up among different personalities and backgrounds. Taking Cambridge, most people jokingly hates St John's and think Homerton are less intelligent. The rivalries probably stemmed from some historical background though.
But really, just grouping people randomly is enough for some hostility. We only don't actually hate each other because we have to work together sometimes.
Dumbledore needs to say that Hogwarts has run out of water, and make the houses cooperate to get a new water supply.
Slytherin would defect and free-ride, alas, tiding itself over with Aguamentis.
In my ~10 years at the university, I don't recall ever meeting anyone who joked about hating St John's. And for most of that time I was at Trinity, where you might think John's-hatred (jocular or otherwise) would be strongest.
Until rather recently, Homerton didn't take students in any subject other than Education. Whether that actually meant its students were less intelligent than those of other colleges, I don't know, but it's not an entirely crazy idea. (I think Homerton's subject balance is still quite different from those of the other colleges.)
[EDITED to add: For the avoidance of doubt, I don't mean that people reading education are particularly unintelligent-by-Cambridge-standards. Only that (1) intelligence surely does vary somewhat by subject, and (2) some subjects have the reputation of requiring particularly high intelligence and education isn't one of them. So if there's a stereotype of Homerton students being less intelligent, it probably has causes less crazy, though not necessarily more correct, than mere historical rivalries.]
I've done one year at Trinity as an undergraduate, and I've already heard many anti-St Johns references.
I was a grad student at Churchill, and we mostly ignored such things, but my girlfriend was an undergrad and felt compelled to educate me. I recall Johns being the rich kids, Peterhouse was the gay men (not sure if that's for an actual reason or just the obvious pun), and a couple others that I can't remember off the top of my head.
I thought Homerton was the obvious gay pun?
And one thing that IS reasonably accurate: New Hall is a female version of Hufflepuff. It is most of the time filled up by the "leftovers" (pooled there)...
A lot of the "hate" between colleges is perpetuated in the same way as most Cambridge traditions. Freshers read on wikipedia what Cambridge traditions are and then emulate them. There is belief in belief that people from St Johns are horrible but not much more.
Well, these traditions somehow propagated before the internet.
In 1993, when I matriculated at Caltech (whose House system Wikipedia claims is based on Cambridge's college system), we got a handbook (the little t) with all of the traditions in it.
That's pretty much the way Hogwarts works, right?