Cementing the Differences
I am not on financial aid. I don’t have to worry about completing the student income contribution. I can afford to eat either in the dining halls or in the restaurants near the University. I can afford to not stress about having to find funding for my summer internship before I know if I can accept the offer. I have gotten to work at a place that I love because I do not rely on my summer job funding my books and summer income contribution for the school year.
This is not true of everyone. I have many friends who are not afforded as much leniency, cannot take advantage of as many opportunities and have to stress a lot more about aspects of their time at Yale. For example, because I don’t have to work in order to fulfill the SIC, I have more time to devote to extracurriculars. Time spent is often a metric for determining who can fulfill larger leadership positions in many of Yale’s organizations. I’m lucky.
However, I only know that I am lucky and that I get the privilege of less stress, more time, and additional freedom because I have seen my friends go through the other side of this process. This is another side of the problem; often time social groups at Yale are stratified by income level. Often times this does not look like the Mean Girls-esque high school discrimination based on what clothes someone is wearing or how nice their car is. It is subtler than that. It can be that some aren’t able to go out to nice dinners every week with their friends, or pay into large organizational budgets. It could even be as simple as students who have to work upwards of 20 hours a week just don’t have as much time to commit to time-intensive extracurriculars or just hanging out with friends every night.
It’s also really easy to miss all of these slight cues or barriers to entry if they do not pertain to you. For example, many groups may not ask for dues but do expect contributions or buy in to parties. It is really easy to announce to everyone that “we should all go out to Ivy Noodle or GHeav” but not to see the people that excludes. It is also rare that someone will speak up and say “sorry guys, I cannot participate because I can’t afford x,” and for good reason. Even this semester, when discussing the communal food that our off-campus house has bought my concerns about price are often met with “well it’s not that expensive” or “yeah, I hear you” without any real shift in amount bought.
Of course class stratification (which is often racialized as well) will not end if Yale gets rid of the student income contribution. There will still be people who can afford to go to get sushi every weekend and others who cannot. There will still be subtle ways in which extracurriculars (organizations incredibly deeply entrenched in what is described as a “Yale education”) are more accessible to some than others. However, it will be a bit better when Yale isn’t adding additional time and budgetary constraints on some students. Yale should be working to alleviate financial stress and class stratification rather than adding to it and cementing the differences it creates.
This is not true of everyone. I have many friends who are not afforded as much leniency, cannot take advantage of as many opportunities and have to stress a lot more about aspects of their time at Yale. For example, because I don’t have to work in order to fulfill the SIC, I have more time to devote to extracurriculars. Time spent is often a metric for determining who can fulfill larger leadership positions in many of Yale’s organizations. I’m lucky.
However, I only know that I am lucky and that I get the privilege of less stress, more time, and additional freedom because I have seen my friends go through the other side of this process. This is another side of the problem; often time social groups at Yale are stratified by income level. Often times this does not look like the Mean Girls-esque high school discrimination based on what clothes someone is wearing or how nice their car is. It is subtler than that. It can be that some aren’t able to go out to nice dinners every week with their friends, or pay into large organizational budgets. It could even be as simple as students who have to work upwards of 20 hours a week just don’t have as much time to commit to time-intensive extracurriculars or just hanging out with friends every night.
It’s also really easy to miss all of these slight cues or barriers to entry if they do not pertain to you. For example, many groups may not ask for dues but do expect contributions or buy in to parties. It is really easy to announce to everyone that “we should all go out to Ivy Noodle or GHeav” but not to see the people that excludes. It is also rare that someone will speak up and say “sorry guys, I cannot participate because I can’t afford x,” and for good reason. Even this semester, when discussing the communal food that our off-campus house has bought my concerns about price are often met with “well it’s not that expensive” or “yeah, I hear you” without any real shift in amount bought.
Of course class stratification (which is often racialized as well) will not end if Yale gets rid of the student income contribution. There will still be people who can afford to go to get sushi every weekend and others who cannot. There will still be subtle ways in which extracurriculars (organizations incredibly deeply entrenched in what is described as a “Yale education”) are more accessible to some than others. However, it will be a bit better when Yale isn’t adding additional time and budgetary constraints on some students. Yale should be working to alleviate financial stress and class stratification rather than adding to it and cementing the differences it creates.
