Abstract
Elite schools have a largely upper-middle-class student body, and high-achieving, low-income students at Dartmouth often comment that faculty, administrators, and students assume everyone is at least middle class. Because middle-class status is assumed, some low-income students maintain that class is not a concern, or that they do not have a sense of class consciousness. This general assumption helps them blend in, but forces them to assimilate to the mainstream. This prevents them from recognizing each other and uniting to foster social change. Students reported concealing their social class, or making little attempt to let others know their background, therefore remaining in the silent minority. This chapter highlights the emotional cost of trying to fit into a place where you don’t automatically belong.
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Notes
- 1.
Tracy J an, “The Harvard Disadvantage: Despite Outreach, the Needy Face Socioeconomic Gulf,” Boston Globe, May 12, 2009, http://www.boston.com/news.education.higher/articles/2009/05/12/the_harvard_disadvantage/ (site discontinued).
- 2.
Paul J. McLou ghlin II, “Full Financial Aid in the Ivy League: How High-Achieving, Low-Income Undergraduates Negotiate the Elite College Environment” (PhD dissertation, Boston College, 2011), 2, Pro-Quest(3449271). HFAI guarantees that students from families with an income below $65,000 will no longer pay to attend Harvard. Loans were eliminated from financial aid packages for these students.
- 3.
Eric J. Ka plan, “Peer Social Networks among Low-Income Students” (PhD dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 2010), 99, Proquest (AAI340479).
- 4.
J an, “The Harvard Disadvantage: Despite Outreach, the Needy Face Socioeconomic Gulf.”
- 5.
Siobhan Greatorex-Voith, “Class & Inequality in Higher Education: The Experiences of Low-Income Students in Elite Higher Education Contexts” (senior thesis, Stanford University, 2008).
- 6.
Ibid.
- 7.
Kenneth D. G rcich, “Beyond the Gates: An Exploration of Socioeconomically Disadvantaged Students Navigating the University of Pennsylvania” (PhD dissertation, University of Pennsylvania, 2008), ProQuest(AAI3310480).
- 8.
McLoughlin, “Full Financial Aid in the Ivy League: How High-Achieving, Low-Income Undergraduates Negotiate the Elite College Environment.”
- 9.
Arie s and Berman, Speaking of Race and Class: The Student Experience at an Elite College, 10.
- 10.
Ibid., 103.
- 11.
Greatorex-Voith, “Class & Inequality in Higher Education: The Experiences of Low-Income Students in Elite Higher Education Contexts.”
- 12.
Grcich, “Beyond the Gates: An Exploration of Socioeconomically Disadvantaged Students Navigating the University of Pennsylvania,” 73.
- 13.
Kap lan, “Peer Social Networks among Low-Income Students.”
- 14.
Greatorex-Voith, “Class & Inequality in Higher Education: The Experiences of Low-Income Students in Elite Higher Education Contexts,” 1.
- 15.
Arthur W. C hickering and Linda Reisser, Education and Identity, 2nd ed. (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1993).
- 16.
John W. Berry and Uichol Kim, “Acculturation and Mental Health: Towards Applications,” in Health and Cross-Cultural Psychology, ed. Pierre R. Dasen, John W. Berry, and Norman Sartorius (Newbury Park, CA: Sage Publications, 1988), 207–236.
- 17.
Sarah S tein, “Spring into Action: Dress for Traction,” The Dartmouth, April 4, 2003, B3.
- 18.
Sarah St ein, “Fashion Houses Alive This Spring: Dartmouth Boys React,” The Dartmouth, May 23, 2003, B2.
- 19.
Ibid.
- 20.
Gus Labin, “Mary Reynolds ’05—She’s Hardly One of the ‘Mean Girls’,” The Dartmouth, November 23, 2004, http://www.thedartmouth.com/article/2004/11/mary-reynolds-05-shes-hardly-one-of-the-mean-girls.
- 21.
Penelope Eckert, Jocks and Burnouts: Social Categories and Identity in High School. (New York: Teachers College Press, Columbia University, 1989).
- 22.
Ibid.
- 23.
Grcich, “Beyond the Gates: An Exploration of Socioeconomically Disadvantaged Students Navigating the University of Pennsylvania.”
- 24.
Jean S. Phinney, Victor Chavira, and Lisa Williamson, “Acculturation Attitudes and Self-Esteem among High School and College Students,” Youth and Society 23, no. 3 (1992): 299–312. doi: 10.1177/0044118X92023003002.
- 25.
Ibid.
- 26.
Chickering and Reisser, Education and Identity, Ibid.
- 27.
Beverly Daniel Tatum, Can We Talk About Race? And Other Conversations in an Era of School Resegregation (Boston: Beacon Press, 2007).
- 28.
Elizabeth Aries and Mayn ard Seider, “The Role of Social Class in the Formation of Identity: A Study of Public and Elite Private College Students,” Journal of Social Psychology 147, no. 2 (2007): 137–157. doi:10.3200/SOCP.147.2.137-157
- 29.
Ibid., 151.
- 30.
Jenny Stuber , “Talk of Class: The Discursive Repertoires of White Working-and Upper-Middle-Class College Students,” Journal of Contemporary Ethnography 35, no. 3 (2006): 308. doi:10.1177/0891241605283569.
- 31.
Ibid., 299.
- 32.
Richard Sennett and Jonathan Cobb, The Hidden Injuries of Class (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, Inc., 1972).
- 33.
Michele Lamont and Virag Molnar, “The Study of Symbolic Boundaries in the Social Sciences,” Annual Review of Sociology 28 (1992): 167–195. doi: 10.1146/annurev.soc.28.110601.141107
- 34.
Barbara Enhrenreich, “The Silenced Majority: Why the Average Working Person Has Disappeared from American Media and Culture,” in Race, Class and Gender: An Anthology, 4th ed., ed. Margaret Andersen and Patricia Collins (Belmont, CA: Wadsworth, 2001), 143–145.
- 35.
Jay MacLeod, Ain’t No Makin’ It: Leveled Aspirations in a Low-Income Neighborhood (Boulder: Westview Press, 1987).
- 36.
Although many first-generation students are low-income, not all fit this category. By contrast, some low-income students do have college-educated parents.
- 37.
Ruby K. Payne, A Framework for Understanding Poverty.
- 38.
Aries and B erman, Speaking of Race and Class: The Student Experience at an Elite College, 132.
- 39.
Kap lan, “Peer Social Networks among Low-Income Students,” 61.
- 40.
Stu ber, “Talk of Class: The Discursive Repertoires of White Working-and Upper-Middle-Class College Students,” 309.
- 41.
Ibid., 294.
- 42.
Ibid., 297.
- 43.
Committee on Institutional Diversity and Equity, The Report of the Committee on Institutional Diversity and Equity (Hanover, NH: Dartmouth College, 2001), 11.
- 44.
Eliza beth Aries, Race and Class Matters at an Elite College (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2008), 56–57.
- 45.
Aries and Berman, Speaking of Race and Class: The Student Experience at an Elite College, 34.
- 46.
Arie s, Race and Class Matters at an Elite College, 56–57.
- 47.
Grcich, “Beyond the Gates: An Exploration of Socioeconomically Disadvantaged Students Navigating the University of Pennsylvania.”
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Landers, K.H. (2018). Passing. In: Postsecondary Education for First-Generation and Low-Income Students in the Ivy League. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-63456-2_5
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