(via eruptive)
Current Ethos President Dominique Hazzard responds to insensitive comments by Wellesley College TV.
| Amanda: | I think a little bag of truffles is much better than a large bag |
| because your marginal utility of each truffle is greater | |
| and you don't feel bad about getting fat | |
| and you savor each truffle | |
| the way you cherish the person whom you're giving the truffles to |
#classism@Wellesley.
Thanks to @iambeauchamp for messaging this to us via twitter. This piece was written by current Wellesley student Emily Loftis and it highlights the realities of classism at Wellesley College from the perspective of a first generation student. Please share your experiences as well by submitting here or emailing us at wellesleyunderground@gmail.com.
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 professor asks who has visited country x, y, and z when I’ve never left the country. Or how frustrating it feels to have to check my bank account before every purchase while my classmates receive money week after week from parents’ seemingly bottomless bank accounts. The anger that springs up when I’m searching for a summer internship because they’re all unpaid and I don’t have enough experience for the paid ones because I spend my summers working. The anger from spending my holiday breaks cleaning houses while my classmates take trips around the world.
I have to attend the 5am punishment meetings at my school when my hall-mates leave dirty dishes all over the floor because I can’t afford the $25 fine for skipping it. I take their dishes down to the dining hall to avoid the need for the meeting in the first place and it reminds me of our differences. These girls never ask who took their dishes down, but if they looked hard enough they could see the chip on my shoulder from doing so.
Home is never a break, I feel even angrier because my achievements have only made home harder. Since attending Wellesley I’ve been emotionally and physically harmed when I return home. No one wants to hear about someone who made it out, who has done better. I’ve had things stolen, comments made, and punches thrown. Sometimes I wish I wouldn’t have ever wanted to do more with my life because the stress and pressure becomes too much.
I need to get this out, in the hopes that by putting it down in writing and out into the world, I might finally be able to let go of the anger that I still feel. In Limbo, Alfred Lubrano mentions anger as one of the most defining emotions of a blue-collar kid trying to bleach her collar white. My anger is something that’s holding me back from all the opportunities I’ve made for myself.
My mom tells me that I should be grateful because I have so much more than so many people. I know she’s right but I can’t help but feel pissed at every kid who’s had their future set before they were even born. My anger is the unspoken side effect of social mobility, what no one ever talks about, but I need to talk about it.
As a fellow first-generation student, I salute you for having the courage to express your anger in such a frank but eloquent way. I am currently working three jobs and my friends joke a lot about me hogging all the jobs on campus; it’s all in good fun and I realize how absurd that may sound out of context, but the context is that I need that money and I have worked hard to cultivate the skills that have garnered me those opportunities. My parents are immigrants, both work full-time, and together earn just slightly above the poverty line, but they never asked me to get a job during high school because my academics were the first priority. The better part of the past twenty years they’ve spent in America has been to ensure that I will (if I play my cards right) never have to toil and pinch the way they have.
I understand that different students come from different backgrounds and that most women who are fortunate enough to be in financially stable situations deserve to be here as much as anyone else and we all have to make our individual sacrifices, some more so than others. In that respect, sometimes I wish I could be angrier that some people take their time for granted or just as a means to an end and express it so flippantly. Wellesley currently pays for more than 90% of my tuition, my parents still insist on paying the rest of it (though I made enough last semester to actually contribute myself, which has honestly been one of the most amazing achievements in my life) so I won’t graduate with student loans, and four semesters into my college career, I still wake up every morning so utterly grateful.
| Amanda: | i hate the css profile |
| i want to kill everything | |
| but i'm glad that i'm doing it now instead of later | |
| omg doing this with my sister is so great | |
| she has an aptitude for looking at billions of numbers | |
| i'm going to make her do my taxes in the future | |
| Alex: | ...this is like |
| child exploitation | |
| i'm picturing a sweatshop | |
| where kids are forced to do taxes | |
| and you are walking around with a duster in your hand | |
| ready to beat up a kid at the first sight of an arithmetic error | |
| the room is drafty | |
| kids are wearing thin shirts and no shoes | |
| you are wearing a leather coat and boots | |
| outside is snowing | |
| the gusty wind pounds the thin window panes | |
| inside is the sound of silence | |
| only the croaky moan of pencil against paper | |
| there flickering light is a symphony of despair | |
| the smell of sulfur is a poem of sorrow | |
| inside the decimals and numbers are the dreams of childhood | |
| the stings of frozen fingers are the only constants | |
| and in their tiny worlds | |
| there are no variables | |
| for tomorrow is a reprise of yesteryear | |
| and memory is a weight they do not bear | |
| the end |
a lovely wintry mix made by my friend Constance.