I’m going to say something that seems heretical to UVM: I’m not that interested in skiing.
Skiing and snowboarding sit at the heart of campus life here. Perhaps this is why they serve as one of the clearest examples of granola exclusion. Skiing is treated as a baseline of being granola, as shown by the average reaction to a friend who doesn’t ski (“You don’t ski? But you go to UVM!”).
“We’re UVM students, of course people assume we always either ski or snowboard!” This quote comes from a post on the official UVM Instagram last year. It’s a joke, but it’s also a stereotype rooted in truth. One Cynic article noted the “compounding social pressure to devote your free time to the skiing and snowboarding culture,” with some students planning entire schedules around it. At UVM, skiing is treated as if it’s a requirement on your Degree Audit, a “natural” preference that signifies who is—and isn’t—considered a full participant in campus life.
As Professor Noriko Matsumoto of UVM’s Sociology Department points out, granola culture “is rendered ‘neutral’ precisely because it is the cultural taste preferred by the dominant group, who has the power to make their taste ‘natural.’” In practice, outdoor fluency, certain brands, and particular music function as credentials for belonging.
Skiing simply shows how granola culture sets the terms of belonging: skip the sport and you’re opting out of a shared language, weekend rituals, and a dominant identity. The barrier to entry is high in terms of money, gear, and fluency. One student estimated it cost $700 just to re-enter a sport they hadn’t touched in years—a bar many can’t clear. When participation comes with real costs, the culture privileges students with resources and sidelines those without. Even without the price tag, disinterest still reads as deviance from the norm.
The way skiing functions as a social barrier exposes how granola culture at UVM tends to elevate certain lifestyles to the status of unquestioned norms, making them seem inevitable rather than intentionally constructed.
At UVM, the most painful form of exclusion isn’t confrontation but invisibility—the slow death of being ignored when one’s interests, identity, or presence aren’t recognized as legitimate. From the moment students step onto campus, they’re handed an unspoken syllabus of cultural norms: ski trips on weekends, hikes on study breaks, thrifted tapestries in dorms, and acoustic ballads on aux. When that same student plays hip-hop through a dorm speaker, peers respond with blank stares instead of engagement. Unconventional fashion choices such as streetwear or bright athletic gear draw puzzled “why that?” looks or dismissive jokes. A student’s display of sneakers brightly lit under a set of LED strips is rarely remarked upon, while her roommate’s hemp-dyed tapestry on the opposite wall becomes a constant topic of praise during room tours. The same patterns play out in student extracurricular life. At club fairs, a freshman can find a Folk Music Club but no dedicated Music Production Club, five a cappella groups and zero schoolwide fashion publications, a ceramics co-op but no graffiti arts collective. The event calendar overflows with outdoor-themed activities, but entire interests outside that mold never materialize.
At first, being ignored might show up as your ideas being met with polite nods but no follow-up, and long stretches of conversation you can’t relate to. Soon enough, your ideas just drift away mid-sentence, and no one even bothers to engage with your point because it’s as if it never existed.
And piece by piece, these moments of being overlooked accumulate into a profound sense of erasure. You begin to doubt whether your interests or voice—whether you, yourself—have any place at the University of Vermont.
At UVM, “granola” and “UVM student” function as near-synonyms. Step outside that default, and you’re peripheral.