Voices

Implications of poverty reach deeper than students’ wallets

April 2, 2014


Although middle school lunchroom politics should be far beneath Georgetown students, cafeterias can still feel like bizarre social experiments, with students segregating themselves into groups by clubs, gender, and race. Leo’s Dining Hall is no exception.

A quick glance around the room reveals some obvious divisions within our Hoya population, but there are other less visible, yet equally troubling processes of segregation occurring at Georgetown that are rarely addressed. The diversity of student experiences tied to socioeconomic status are often left unexamined and the practice of confronting class issues has not yet entered the collective conscious of the Georgetown student body. This lack of recognition perpetuates a chronic marginalization of lower-income students, who arguably need the most support during their college years.

The transition into college can be challenging and even traumatic for any student—however, it is critical to acknowledge the added difficulties that come with being an exception to the standard of wealth that exists at an elite university like Georgetown. Kaley Palanjian (COL ‘16) serves as the mentorship coordinator for the Georgetown Scholarship Program, which is one of the few organizations on campus that is directed primarily at the needs of low-income and first generation college students. Palanjian considers GSP to be an important resource for low-income students who need help navigating and negotiating unfamiliar territory. “It’s about way more than just a difference in money. There is a huge culture shock, and low-income students often have a lack of social and cultural capital,” Palanjian says.

Palanjian sees the peer mentorship program as an essential step in eliminating disadvantages for GSP students, saying, “Part of GSP is giving students a network and the other part is giving students a support system in this unfamiliar environment they are transplanted into.” This crucial cultural component of being in the socioeconomic minority at Georgetown is usually downplayed or glossed over completely. These differences sometimes manifest in seemingly small ways, but the final result is more exaggerated divisions within the student body.

Perhaps the most obvious daily point of tension along the socioeconomic divide is the rampant misuse of terms referring to social class. In general, an environment like Georgetown offers a very distorted representation of the financial realities of an average American family, so the inaccurate self-identification of wealthy Georgetown students as “poor” and “broke” seem bizarre and even painful to the minority of students on campus who have experienced true financial hardship. The careless and uninformed usage of these labels by economically privileged students is a form of cultural appropriation in many ways and it is symptomatic of an insulated and socioeconomically homogeneous community.

The implications of poverty extend far beyond the contents of a student’s wallet: a low-income background can, and often does, entail systemic disadvantages like failing public schools, poor access to healthcare, and the realities of food insecurity. When I hear the word “poor” I think of my aunt choosing between purchasing her insulin for the month or paying rent, not a dilemma about whether to get a dessert with my meal at Cafe Milano.

In extreme—and in my experience, rare—cases, wealthier peers view students on heavy scholarship as parasites who run up tuition costs, but even under the most accepting circumstances, low-income students still experience a sense of profound displacement that comes with a radical shift in their cultural environment. Large income gaps themselves are not the true root of discomfort among students—it is the inability to engage honestly on the subject, as wealthy students try to deny or understate their privilege and low-income students attempt to avoid the matter by blending into the crowd.

As Palanjian pointed out, this isn’t just a money issue, and it isn’t an issue of bitter envy on one end or snobbish ignorance on the other. However, there is a significant social division here, sustained by a lack of communication and the challenges of assimilation. Lower-income students should feel empowered to create spaces for themselves on campus and to form a collective voice that will help generate a much-needed honest dialogue around class issues.

It is crucial that these conversations take place at sites of elite privilege like Georgetown, where students should be encouraged to contextualize their own experiences with class and think critically about the structures that perpetuate their own socioeconomic advantages or disadvantages.



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spob

“It is crucial that these conversations take place at sites of elite privilege like Georgetown, where students should be encouraged to contextualize their own experiences with class and think critically about the structures that perpetuate their own socioeconomic advantages or disadvantages.”

Do people really believe this?