Self-Exploration Shouldn't Be a Luxury
I’ve been fortunate enough at Yale to be able to dispose of my time as I like – to go to plays, concerts, master’s teas, and lectures; throw myself into extracurriculars; and hang out with friends as frequently as I want (subject to the constraints of schoolwork). Every week, I work tutoring kids to prepare them for the National Spelling Bee, using the skills that I honed during my years in the Bee. I’ve really enjoyed the challenging intellectual work of teaching my pupils about spelling and vocabulary. My job has been tremendously flexible and both emotionally and materially rewarding. I set my own schedule and choose how many students to tutor. Because of my class and racial privilege, my experience here has been one of great freedom – I’ve been able to cultivate my passions in the way that Yale seems to advertise, and I’ve never felt out of place or that this institution doesn’t care about me.
So it strikes me as an extraordinary injustice that many of my fellow students, especially students of color, are saddled with a work requirement. Their work is an externally imposed burden. They have to do jobs that they wouldn’t otherwise do, simply to satisfy Yale’s student income contribution requirement, and this means that ten or fifteen fewer hours for schoolwork, socializing, relaxing, and taking advantage of the abundance of cultural and academic opportunities Yale offers are effectively stolen from them every week as the result of an intentional administrative decision. Being a college student is stressful enough without any financial burdens to worry about. I can’t imagine what I would do without enough time for my coursework and leisure time to relax and reflect. And it adds insult to injury that the student income contribution disproportionately impacts students of color when Yale as an institution has such a troubled history of and relationship to racism.
College is an opportunity to figure out what you stand for and what kind of person you want to be. The process of self-exploration requires time and mental energy. It shouldn’t be a luxury, and it shouldn’t be a privilege restricted to an elite racially and economically privileged few. Yale should remove its utterly unnecessary income contribution requirement so that all Yalies, regardless of race or class, can enjoy the good things that Yale has to offer.
So it strikes me as an extraordinary injustice that many of my fellow students, especially students of color, are saddled with a work requirement. Their work is an externally imposed burden. They have to do jobs that they wouldn’t otherwise do, simply to satisfy Yale’s student income contribution requirement, and this means that ten or fifteen fewer hours for schoolwork, socializing, relaxing, and taking advantage of the abundance of cultural and academic opportunities Yale offers are effectively stolen from them every week as the result of an intentional administrative decision. Being a college student is stressful enough without any financial burdens to worry about. I can’t imagine what I would do without enough time for my coursework and leisure time to relax and reflect. And it adds insult to injury that the student income contribution disproportionately impacts students of color when Yale as an institution has such a troubled history of and relationship to racism.
College is an opportunity to figure out what you stand for and what kind of person you want to be. The process of self-exploration requires time and mental energy. It shouldn’t be a luxury, and it shouldn’t be a privilege restricted to an elite racially and economically privileged few. Yale should remove its utterly unnecessary income contribution requirement so that all Yalies, regardless of race or class, can enjoy the good things that Yale has to offer.
