"The odd thing is that you can also get flak from your peers if you purchase something from a high end store. That whole “check your privilege” can make students feel uncomfortable as well. "
D’s college has one of those trade-in/giveaway swaps and girls have gotten flak because they were selling or giving away designer or high-end brands. Can’t win for losing.
I wear your granddad’s clothes. I look incredible.
That was never my experience at NYU (perhaps because I was there for grad school on two separate occasions). Even now when I walk through the campus, the last words I would say is fashion obsessedness, unless ripped jeans and T-shirts are now the height of fashion (really not much has changed). I have had NYU/TC interns working for me in for the past 10 years, and I still have not seen this fashion obsessedness you talk about.
"For instance, the past thread about how some students avoided GWU because the campus culture had a prevalence of mostly upper/upper-middle class students wearing brand-name clothing, handbags, and accessories which would be out of the budget range for most of the middle-class and lower relates to some aspects covered in the article.
One which folks like PG downplayed by implying those who have issues with such a campus culture should “get over it” rather than avoiding GWU or other campuses with similar cultures."
You are explicitly conflating two things:
These two are not the same thing by any stretch of the imagination.
The student who is sitting next to another student and notices that that student has a designer handbag (or whatever) and “feels bad” needs to separate out what’s really going on. The second student hasn’t turned to her and said, “Boy, what’s with you? How come you don’t have a handbag as expensive as mine? Are you poor or something? Ha ha, what a loser you are!” The second student is merely going about her business - it’s just that when she’s pulling out her pen it happens to be from a more expensive handbag. That’s all. If an onlooker chooses to feel “bad” or “inferior” about that - when the designer-owning-student hasn’t said one word about the topic - that’s the onlooker’s projections.
Grad students at NYU live very separate lives from undergrads at NYU.
Also, if you attended NYU before the mid-'90s, NYU changed greatly due to its transition from a mostly tri-state private commuter school to one drawing students nationally and around the world.
I walked around the NYU campus many times when D attended and never noticed this. D and her friends were not part of that “critical mass”.
The small town Illinois HS I attended from was full of fashion obsessed people. Ther were some fashion obsessed people at my college. So what.
There are a lot of subtle ways that poorer kids feel pressure or disadvantage, and it’s not always due to teasing and its not always due to their peers.
A recent example in our high school was that a particular teacher was regularly having kids use their smart phones in class for various purposes, including watching You tube videos. He was surprised when a couple kids said they didn’t own a smart phone, and remarked, “Oh, I thought every teenager these days had a smart phone!” So then he just told them to look over someone’s else’s shoulder at their phone. That’s not an optimal situation with such a small screen if you’re expecting kids to learn from the video. One student whose mother I am friends with, did have a smart phone, but not an unlimited data plan. Her son unknowingly ran up a huge phone bill that his mother could not afford to pay on time. At first she got really angry at him. This year teachers in our high school are asking kids and their parents to sign up for text alerts. They remind kids of tests and things like that. Most of the teachers are reasonable users, but D has one who will use it just to say “Happy snow day!” and other pleasantries. Some people, mostly the adults, who didn’t pay for unlimited texting, were put over their limit into the pay per text zone by this new feature and had to ask to be unsubscribed.
D had a coach who did not hide his displeasure that not everyone on the team bought the optional T-shirt, because he wanted everyone to wear it over their track singlet and look uniform. He clearly thought the non-purchasers had just been too disorganized to remember to bring in the money, or else just didn’t care and that offended him. In his mind, what was $15? Pocket change. As a college example, D’s coach loved to talk about the fact that certain of his team were “doing things right,” and the rest of the team needed to emulate them. He clearly favored those athletes, and felt they were more dedicated than their teammates. However, it turned out that one of the main things that he considered to be in the category of “not doing things right,” was tiring themselves out working in dining service jobs, which a number of girls on the team did. He actually said that he didn’t believe that anyone at a school like this one could possibly be poor enough to really need to do that.
What people may not realize is that no single one of these experiences is so very terrible. But kids get worn down by the accumulation of them, and not all young people are strong enough to just shake it off. Kids with no parental support probably struggle more than others. You may think they shouldn’t feel bad, or are shallow not to just hold their head up and all that, but clearly they can’t. Sure, there are the professional victims who feel put upon for everything, and they are really annoying. But I’m not talking about them.
I’d prefer you not make assumptions about me or hang labels on me. I’m happy to answer any question I can.
Somewhat related to the previous posit regarding whether these same folks, upon graduation, assume their newly found economic standing and just don’t look back? Well, I can’t answer that, but I remember a bschool case study, that followed women 10-20 years after bschool graduation at top 20 b schools. The findings were quite remarkable–in short, it held that women of color were much more likely to still be in the workplace (around 90%) 10-20 years after graduation, where similar white female peers, less than 50% were still even working.
One can make all sorts of societal and economic assumptions about these findings, but it certainly says something about the ROI as to the degree and women of color, and furthermore, women of color by economic necessity have to work, and the degree is by no means a societal acctroument.
Well, that’s interesting. Apparently, these girls encouraged her to buy an expensive item earlier this year, which she declined to do and they may have felt badly knowing she was an athlete and thinking she was on scholarship. Subsequently, they found out she was well off and seem to be getting more and more insistent that she spend money on luxury items under the theory that they would if they could.
One thing that I find more privileged people do more often is ask for special treatment. Asking for an extension on a paper or a meeting outside the office hours is like breathing for some people, but it is not something I or many other people from lower SES are comfortable doing. It never occurred to me, for example, that I could e-mail a professor when I am on a waiting list for a class and be pushed to the front of the line, but someone I met recently from a higher SES “got into the best classes in colleges” like that. These things wouldn’t be necessarily classified as “asking for help.”
I agree with a lot of what you say @TheGFG. It is hard for adults to witness these struggles because we all value an equal playing field for our children. But if they can’t shake it off or learn to do so over time what is the alternative? Not send them to schools that might expose them to uncomfortable situations? I am pretty sure that is not the answer. The worst struggles my own children experienced were the ones that rendered the most personal growth. I would say the same for me in my own life.
While I do not agree with the whole quote I think the best statement in that original article is this:
I like this statement because Contreras seems to take responsibility for his experience at Brown. Someone like that will succeed. He has been given an opportunity and he is going to make the best of it. I also think clubs like IVYG, Inter-Ivy and FGCSN can be a very helpful resource for students feeling out of step. These are the sort of resources that students need since their very existence gives them access to other students who might have similar concerns. I am not sure that there is any magic solution that can ensure that their transition to college will be stress free and there won’t be some “growing pains.” I think that is an inherent part of the transition they have chosen to make.
@worth2try, not sure if it is privilege or experience. The person in your story probably gained the experience from their parents experience or another student. Now you will do the same for the rest of your college career and so will your children when the time comes.
@worth2try I agree with you. My daughter was quite surprised to see her classmates go directly to the deans office or even penning the vice provost office about a personal situation. They knew, being legacy students, these offices would not just respond, but respond accordingly.
I agree with your post, harvestmoon and I also appreciated Contreras’ attitude and approach to the situation. The key is not to focus on the slights or insults or feelings of alienation, but to look for solutions and personal growth. That said, it does bother me that when someone speaks up about an issue like this, s/he is accused of complaining or whining or expecting others to jump to the rescue. That is unfair. Sometimes people just want to be better understood.
It’s not the having less that hurts, it’s knowing some people (like the coaches I mentioned) attribute the behavior of the less fortunate to causes like being lazy, stupid, or uncaring. For example, when a kid or his parent purchases an inferior product (phone, computer, sneakers, tennis racket, etc.) because he needed that item urgently and the one he got was the best one he could afford, the reaction he gets from others can be summarized as, “What did you buy that piece of crap for? You should have bought this other much better thing…” Someone I know once bought a wool work suit from the thrift store and put it away until the colder weather. When she brought it out again, she discovered it was full of holes and all the other wool items in her closet were now moth-eaten too. She lamented to a “friend,” who replied, “Well, that’s why I never buy that second-hand junk. You never know where it’s been.” Multiply that experience over time, and maybe you can imagine the impact on people.
But then remember the student group that overtook the President’s office at Dartmouth last year? They felt they were not being heard and they had no problem stepping up. Not sure I agree with their tactics but certainly they were not reluctant to make their demands known at the highest levels.
I’ve noticed this too among quite a few undergrad classmates who attended private/boarding schools where teachers would provide deadline extensions and other forms of special treatment so regularly they expected the trend to continue in college and had issues when our Profs were less accommodating.
They complained about the “unfair rigidness” which sounded odd to my ears coming from a public magnet where teachers were strict about deadlines and would go so far as dock enough points so an A paper/project assignment would become a D if turned in 2 days late. And if students complained, the teachers would warn them that being late with deadlines in many work settings will mean negative performance reviews, disciplinary measures such as loss of pay, or possibly even termination.
From my perspective, I felt our college Profs were exceedingly accommodating by providing deadlines for some classmates even if it was apparent they goofed off till the last minute and offered up some pretty flimsy excuses.
Ironically, the older undergrad classmates who didn’t grow out of this feeling of entitlement by graduation ended up having some serious adjustment issues in the post-college work world with some terminations and complaints about how those terminations were “soo unfair!” There were times I had a hard time restraining myself from rolling my eyes…
My kids’ wealthy classmates don’t have to worry about real jobs. They know they can rely on getting cushy appointments, like the Ambassadorship to Japan, that their forebears get.
That has not been my D’s experience at boarding school. If a deadline is set by a teacher that deadline is adhered to unless there is some sort of health issue that prevented the student from meeting the deadline. Since the health center is on campus that health issue can easily be verified.
I don’t think it’s “entitlement” to ask nicely if an exception can be made in a given circumstance and accept the response graciously. The worst that happens is someone says no. It’s only entitlement if it’s assumed or demanded.
If that’s an upper middle class norm that needs to be taught, then so be it.