As the economic inequality gap continues to widen, students at Grand Valley State University in Traverse City, Michigan, started saying that they were tired of “talking” about economic inequality; they wanted to “do” something. We feel that there is a growing emergency. Waiting for things to get better in some far off future began to […]
Class in Higher Education
Leaving the Cafeteria: an Outsider’s Perspective on Intercity Students
One of my greatest privileges of my high school and college education was not the fact that I went to accredited institutions, nor the fact that I was simply educated, (though the latter privilege is certainly noteworthy.) It was the fact that despite being restricted to schools that were by design socially exclusive at-face, (my […]
A story of crossing the tracks
I was born and raised in working-class Philadelphia. Growing up I did not see myself as an underrepresented and repressed segment of society. Certainly I saw that there were those who had more money and material goods than I did, but it was not something I dwelled on. This was because everyone I knew was […]
Class Divide in Internships
Last summer I was hired as an intern for an education advocacy group in Seattle. It was my first time working as an intern and it took me several months to secure one for the summer. I have a year left before graduating from college. Facing a competitive job market after graduation, I decided to […]
A Small Fish in a Big Pond
Junior year of high school, I was informed, was the most crucial one in laying out the roadway towards college. As one who was raised to never even consider not going to college, I was looking forward to engaging in the preparation for higher education. From an early age, I knew that the public school […]
A cross-class dating anecdote
At Brooklyn College, part of the City of New York’s public higher education system, I began to be acutely aware of class. I asked a co-ed for a date, she agreed and gave me her address to pick her up on Saturday. I noted that her address was in Flatbush, a middle income community unlike […]
Cross-class College Interactions
College, they tell us, is the great middle class-making machine. When I think back on my own cross-class interactions at college, I mostly feel gratitude for the worlds my wealthier friends opened up to me and the way they included and shared with me. My closer friends were solidly middle (including comfortable working-class) and upper […]
How does financial aid affect the classism climate on campuses?
Log on to any college or university website today, and you are almost guaranteed to find a whole section dedicated to convincing prospective students that a higher education is affordable. Financial aid has established its place firmly on the laundry list of “what a college should have,” and for good reasons, too. However, has it […]
Classism in Academia
A little over two years ago, a student called me a ‘cunt’ in front of 38 other students. My academic employer did little to protect me and allowed a local, “progressive” paper to attack me in a newspaper/Internet article. I believe this had everything to do with my being a popular but adjunct, community college […]
Is Classism a Hate Crime?
Classism is the new acceptable discrimination. It’s a phenomenon I met while growing up poor and continually saw in the physical facts of life—food, clothing, housing, transportation, acne treatments and braces—all were allocated by class. Generally, so were the emotional/social facts of life: respect, admiration, popularity, participation in plays and expensive sports—those were, by and […]
Dropping the C-Bomb
When I brought up social class advantages in my classroom at Emory University (one of the colleges that calls itself “the Ivy of the South”), my students got furious. What did I do that got such an angry response? I stated that there were students in the classroom who did not arrive at Emory based […]
The Dreams of Poor and Working-Class Students
I was half-listening to the radio last week when I heard an interviewer ask a question that made me pause in my work to listen. “So”, the interviewer warmly asked, “You knew even as a small child that you wanted to be a concert cellist?” “Oh yes”, the woman answered. “Since I was eight.” I’ve […]
Being Indebted Is My Real Wealth
I’m distressed that academic conventions seem to preclude, or at least discourage, acknowledgment that the work I will present to my dissertation committee is not, properly speaking, mine. “My” project involves spiking seawater samples with methyl mercury. My background is environmental health, not analytical chemistry. I don’t have the skills to handle methyl mercury safely. […]
Going on Trial to Prove I Belong
Soon after arriving on campus as a freshman I found myself navigating the long hallways of college almost furtively, quietly darting between the large archways of the turn-of-the-century building, afraid to cause a stir lest I be told that my acceptance to this institution had all been a mistake and could at any point be […]
No-degree social movement thinkers
Who do you think of when you think of a social movement theorist? A professor? Two of the authors who have taught me the most about social movement strategy have only high school degrees: Linda Stout and the late Bill Moyer. I very rarely see either of them cited in the social movement literature. I […]
The anger of a first-generation student
Growing up, my parents always told me that I could be and do whatever I wanted. I always believed them, but what I was never told was how angry I’d feel every day of my life. No one told me about the anger I’d feel when 90% of my class raises their hand when the […]
Overlooking luck
Can someone please explain to Newt Gingrich that people not wanting a job typically doesn’t cause poverty; being unable to get a job causes poverty. I would strongly assert that very few people want to be unable to provide for themselves and their families. People who have only experienced privilege often do not recognize the […]
Socializing with Ivy League elitists
“But you don’t seem poor” — five words that I’ll never forget. In the fall of 2009 I arrived at Wellesley College after having spent my entire life in a small town in Ohio. Most of the kids that I had dated in high school were the same kids I played with on the playground. […]
How working at a community college is like working retail
Expectations are a pain in the ass. There’s an old saying, “plant an expectation, reap a disappointment.” Yep I did it, planted and am now disappointed. I teach Sociology at a rural community college; I love teaching, but I don’t love that adjunct teachers like me are temporary, at-will employees. Who knew that the working […]
Schooling the system of privilege
This “back to school” season got me to thinking about my own formal education, and the teachers and professors I’ve known who have or have not used their positions of academic influence to challenge the status quo, especially the economic status quo. The current issue of Boston Review features Noam Chomsky’s essay, “The Responsibility of […]
