Letters to the Editor | Issues of class need to be confronted on campus

A common assumption held by many here at Vassar and in the surrounding community is that all Vassar students are the daughters and sons of the well-to-do “liberal elite.” As recent local media coverage has revealed, it is presupposed that our privileged existence is bought and paid for, and that our comfortable lifestyle is guaranteed by our shared socioeconomic position as “winners” in the American caste system. If we get in a pinch, no worries, “daddy will send the check” to straighten things out. This assumption of a shared financial and cultural affluence is also prevalent in classrooms here on campus.

While every student on campus is privileged to attend such a distinguished institution of higher learning, not all have had access to the same resources. It is often silencing when the collective “we” takes reign on campus: “Because we are all privileged, we don’t understand how it is to struggle.” Many of us, though, do know what it is like to struggle, and we continue to struggle as we try to connect with the middle-class world, one that for most of our lives has been closed off to us. We have labored in the sense that we climb between two worlds—Vassar and home—where different expectations face us. Many of the working-class students cope with these differences daily, yet this assumption that since we are at Vassar we all have enjoyed the same privileges before walking into that gate pervades, creating a negative Vassar identity especially within the local community.

Perceptions of a generic Vassar student need to be combated. While Vassar has begun to address issues of race, gender, and sexuality, class remains an entity that is altogether absent from campus discussion. In requesting certification from the Vassar Student Association, we, the Class Issues Alliance, set forth to begin this discussion in earnest.

We are not the daughters and sons of the liberal elite. We are the daughters and sons of appliance repairmen, carpenters and teachers, and we are fiercely proud of where we came from, different as it may be from the Vassar Bubble. Some of us are transfer students; many of us are the first members of our families to attend college. For many of us, attending college, much less a college like Vassar, was by no means a guarantee. Regardless, we are here, we exist at Vassar, and for all of us, adherance to the “typical Vassar student” model is impossible. Our class positions have united us in our demand that the issues we face daily be brought to the attention of the student body and addressed.

—Chris Beach ’09, Lulu Caruso ’07,
Jessica Harrison ’09, Brielyn Smith ’07