The Paradigm of Privilege

When news of the 2006 rape scandal at Duke University broke, the university's name was strewn across newspaper and magazine headlines at newsstands around the country. Each article, be it a news blurb, magazine feature, interview or investigative essay, highlighted one aspect of Duke: it's a privileged kid's school. Various writers discussed the lavish lives of Duke students, who drink $10 martinis at lunch, split their time between Wasp-y suburbs and Europe and enjoy their elevated status on the social food chain.

At our University, similar privileged people surface. On any given weekend, it's easy to find students at local bars downing drinks as if money is not a concern. Students bustle into residence halls on Saturday afternoons, their arms heavy with shopping bags and their (parents') steaming credit cards. However, the situation can be entirely different for students from families with lower incomes. These students hold jobs, conserve money and choose their majors based on getting a lucrative career to pay off student loans.

"I've been here since 1990," Dr. Bill Offutt, director of the Honors College and long-time professor of history, said. "In 1990, there were very few children of parents who made more than $100,000."

While Offutt maintains the University boasts students from both sides of the socioeconomic spectrum, he feels the privileged students are a prominent force on campus.

Andre Cordon, assistant director for admissions at the University, said as an admissions officer, he would have trouble "guesstimating" the range of socioeconomic backgrounds of students. This is partly because the wealthiest students often do not file family income information with the University, as they are not eligible for financial aid. Hence, there is little-to-no record of how many students' families make upwards of $125,000 (the figure that most sociologists define as "privileged.")

However, Cordon did surmise there is a large quantity of students from privileged backgrounds at the University, given "there are many students who we don't much have [sic] financial information on, so we can assume they are wealthy enough to not need financial aid." He continued: "It's harder to tell at a private school where everything a student might otherwise report is optional."

"Starting in the late '90s, when New York became a very hot place for students to come for their college experience, we started acquiring a more elite group," Offutt said. "In the past 10 years, students from wealthier families came in. In honors, that is very apparent because these are usually students who aspired to get into Columbia and Barnard and ended up here."

Offutt recalled an experience that most poignantly represents his view of University students. He brought three students with him to a conference at Barnard College to be on a panel with Barnard students. Offutt and his students noticed the Barnard students all seemed exactly alike in appearance, speech habits, opinions and all projected an air of wealth. The students Offutt brought were all from immigrant families with different intonations, clothing choices and ideas.

Such schisms are present even within the University's student body. "There is definitely a rift between working class students and students from the upper end of the economic spectrum [at the University]," Offutt said. "I'm sure there is a difference within the dorms with people who have more family income and those who don't, but even more so between commuters and those who can afford to live in dorms."

Offutt feels this class divide presents immediate and long-term repercussions. "It creates a class and participation rift as students who have to worry about catching the next ferry out can't go to 'x' or 'y' activity," he said. "It limits the ability to have a good college education."

Students, however, aren't always as incisive on the topic. A random polling of forty students in the cafeteria, library, hallway and residence hall lounges (so as to assure various ages, races, and socioeconomic statuses) demonstrated University students have mixed feelings on the subject. Roughly two thirds of the participants argued the University is not a "privileged kid's school." Most students argued there are privileged students here, but the "generally generous" financial aid department allows for students of various levels of wealth to attend. However, almost a third of students did feel the University is a privileged kid school.

"I shop online all day and when I run out of money in my bank account, my mom replaces it," sophomore Stephanie Habbershaw said. "My roommate gets three allowances: One from her mom, one from her grandpa and one from her boyfriend."

This being said, Habbershaw does not see the University as a stomping ground for privileged kids. "No, that's Quinnipiac University," she said. "When I visited there, I thought I would be the poor kid on campus but every day was like a Louis Vuittion fashion show."

Most students agreed, compared to schools like Quinnipiac, Columbia and NYU, the University doesn't appear to possess an overwhelmingly wealthy student body.

"My boyfriend's roommate at Columbia has a house in Garden City but spends more of his time in London and traveling around Europe during breaks," sophomore Heather Doherty said. "That is privileged. That school and schools like Yale and Harvard and even NYU are all about legacy and status."

This has been an increasing grudge possessed not just by students, but by members of the media, too. Daniel Golden, a staffer at the Wall Street Journal published his book, The Price of Admission: How America's Ruling Class Buys Its Way into Elite Colleges-and Who Gets Left Outside the Gates in Sept. 2006. He accuses elite colleges of admitting students based on what kind of family they come from and how much money they have. He cited how colleges use the term "hooked" to describe applicants they'd like to admit based on who the applicants know and how much money their parents have-regardless of the applicants' academic or personal merits.

Doherty and Habbershaw agree Columbia is "old money," NYU is mostly old money with some "new money" and the wealthier students at the University are largely new money. Both also believe the University admits on merit, not status.

"The 2010 class I hope is an anomaly," Offutt said, commenting on the more privileged batch of students who arrived on campus last fall. "We had this crazy $5,000 jump in tuition and the class issue became more acute. There are many more wealthy students, whereas next year Pace is trying to fix the entering class by giving out financial aid and getting back to our principals, [which are] for middle class kids to be able to come here. We try to give middle class accessibility to education of this caliber."

A small fraction of polled students felt everyone who goes to college is privileged in some sense. Renee Cotton, a freshman, feels students at the University were dealt a good hand of cards. "I mean, we're in school. There are so many people in New York who don't even have homes, and we're here."