Charlotte Simmons Goes To Yale

So a Yalie named Aurora Nichols - a financial-aid student, and the daughter of community college grads - did a senior project that was supposed to be a commentary on class and money in the Ivy League: She took pictures of her everyday purchases - deodorant, takeout, etc. - and interspersed them with her classmates' abstract paintings. This earned her a profile in the Hartford Courant, which in turn earned her, well, commentary like this on a Yale message board:

"The thought if people having to rub elbows with such a gauche and uppity poor and worse her yokel trash family made me ill. Why do we have to be egalitarian?"

Ah, Yalies. And then this:

"Her story is proof that elites lower the bar for poors. 5th in her class at a TTT high school, and a 1440 SAT should not be getting her into Yale."

Seems like a straightforward morality play, right? On the other hand, here's an example, from the Courant profile, of how the brutal realities of class differences were rubbed in Aurora's face at Yale:

On a Saturday night last winter, the Yale Bellydance Society chose Davenport for its theme party, "A Night at the Casbah." After dinner, the belly dancers pushed the tables against the wall, turning a sedate room, with a Waterford crystal chandelier glittering at the center, into a raucous dance hall.

Aurora was there, but not to dance. As a student manager, she was paid $15 an hour to make sure the kitchen and cleanup ran smoothly. As the meal wound down, a member of the Bellydance club approached Aurora to ask for the tray of leftover brownies.

"Any leftovers go to the homeless shelter," she said curtly.

The student tried humor. "College kids are hungry?"

"No," Aurora said firmly, cheeks flushed.

"The food is for homeless people," she said later. "It isn't for hungry Yalies who already ate dinner and had a chance to eat a brownie."

I think the lessons one might draw from all this are twofold. First, that it can be tough to be a working-class kid at an Ivy League school, and that the large quantity of overprivileged douchebags hanging around campus - and campus message boards - make it harder still. Second, that it's even tougher if you decide to go through your four years with an enormous chip on your shoulder, which on the evidence of this profile seems to have been Aurora Nichols' approach.

Comments

Is it possible that some of those message board posts are "tongue-in-cheek"? I mean, they seem so overstated that you kind of wonder if its a joke...Then again, I'm from the Midwest, where people keep their elitist feelings to themselves if they have any- so those kind of expressions have a cartoonish, other-worldly ring in my ears anyway...

Posted by P | June 20, 2007 2:05 PM

Second, that it's even tougher if you decide to go through your four years with an enormous chip on your shoulder, which on the evidence of this profile seems to have been Aurora Nichols' approach.

;-) what some may perceive as a chip on the shoulder might be the plain spoken habits of the work class. grace comes naturally to those to whom much is given.

Posted by razib | June 20, 2007 2:15 PM

Yeah, I agree with P, message boards are a very poor way to assess actual opinions. There are always trolls looking to stir things up. In a sense, this mirrors Ross's point - if you take message boards seriously, you will have a very low opinion of people, and you will be offended quite often. What you often get is a symbiotic relationship in which trolls write inflammatory posts and student groups get outraged, pointing to the posts as evidence that their constituency suffers discrimination. The ensuing fracas is exactly what the trolls want to provoke. This may be troubling, but it's important to recognize the dynamic and discount the probability that there's actual animus against whatever group is offended.

Posted by minderbender | June 20, 2007 2:23 PM

"Second, that it's even tougher if you decide to go through your four years with an enormous chip on your shoulder, which on the evidence of this profile seems to have been Aurora Nichols' approach."

This is exactly what I was thinking as I read this. As someone who went to Yale while his parents were making less than $50K a year (which I didn't even realize was a small amount of money until I arrived in New Haven), I was pretty appalled by the story. How much of this is Aurora Nichols and how much of this is the reporter imbuing his own view of the storyline upon her is difficult to tell. But I came away from the stroy concluding that Aurora Nichols had concluded that she was better than those rich people, which isn't much better than the rich people concluding that they were better than her.

Posted by Sean | June 20, 2007 2:28 PM

Yes, 'cause we all know getting accepted to Yale is all about merit.

Posted by EpicureanQuaker | June 20, 2007 3:45 PM

Let's put it this way-- I have a feeling you will find a lot more "merit" in the way in which Aurora Nichols got into Yale than you will in the way George W. Bush got into the same institution.

The class bias Nichols perceives is real and pronounced, as Ivy League institutions, rather than achieving real diversity, have simply mixed the same upper class snobs who always went to them with the meritocratic elite, a bunch of people from more modest backgrounds who scored high on their standardized tests. The legacies are going to see the high-scorers as unrefined rubes, and the high-scorers are going to see the legacies as snobs. And the university will do little to try and fight the class consciousness out of fear of offending its donors.

Posted by Dilan Esper | June 20, 2007 4:12 PM

Christ. I went to Yale in the 90s. Worked the dining hall. Parents never went to college. (Sniffle. Sob.) You know, it really wasn't all that bad. No higher percentage of douchebags than anywhere else.

Nobody was walking around all dolled up in Prada. Or driving Porches. People got drunk. Wore sweatpants. And tried to graduate. Maybe people think way too much about this stuff.

And man. I thought I was getting paid way too much to work in the dining hall when I was there. $15 an hour? Who needs Yale?

Why didn't she transfer? And for god's sake, pack up them damn brownies. And chicken patties. Yes the chicken patties. You can trade them for booze. And drugs.

Seriously.

Posted by Sam M | June 20, 2007 4:20 PM

The comments aren't on a "Yale message board." Check the link.

Posted by MattJ | June 20, 2007 5:01 PM

Good grief; Matt J. is right. If, as P and minderbender correctly say, we can't take message boards as truly representative of anything, that goes triple for comments on the notorious gossip site Gawker.

P.S. What on Earth is a TTT high school.

Posted by James Kabala | June 21, 2007 12:03 AM

There should be a question mark at the end of that last sentence.

Posted by James Kabala | June 21, 2007 12:06 AM

Sorry; I got confused myself. The nasty comments were linked to by Gawker, not made there. But I don't think autoadmit.com is "a Yale message board" either.

Posted by James Kabala | June 21, 2007 12:08 AM

Final comment: since when has "poor" been a noun? I'm familiar with the collective term "the poor," but not this apparent new slang term "a poor."

Posted by James Kabala | June 21, 2007 12:11 AM

What a bunch of crap. I'm Yale '04, and I never experienced or heard of this kind of elitism.

There. Does my anecdote cancel the OP's? It is entitled to the same consideration, right?

Good grief. Using Gawker or autoadmit as some kind of authoritative source? Give me a break.

Posted by jouster | June 21, 2007 10:04 AM

Dilan
The legacies of which you speak hardly exist anymore. Instead of people with substandard SAT scores and the right last name you have the denizens of overpriced private schools that start prepping kids for their SATs in first grade. Yes the legacy can be a plus, but so can race/ethnicity, and I'd wager a guess that in most instances the latter goes a good deal farther than the former. The people of whom you speak now people UVM (my alma mater) and other good but not great schools in reach of an SAT tutor and a grade factory of a high school for people with three last names but precious little upstairs.

Posted by Anonymous Conservative | June 22, 2007 6:30 PM

I personally think it's a bit rude of her to deny some kid brownies. I mean, excess food from the dining halls also goes to the homeless, but that doesn't mean we shouldn't eat as much as we want. Also, I know plenty of people IN the Bellydancing society, and they come from a wide range of socioeconomic backgrounds. Who's to say that Aurora Nichols isn't financially better off than some members of the group, whose parents might not have even attended college? I also can't imagine that Rickie Trudeau felt good about her being targeted as a spoiled have-everything child when she can't really help that her parents are financially successful.

Missed out on the best classes? How do legacies and the rich know which classes to take? They ask their dean, like everyone else. Wasn't able to furnish the common room? Like every college, Yale dorms are furnished with cheap IKEA furniture. Furthermore, $1500 in three months is simply over the top. I never really put a budget on myself, and I spent less than that much over the course of the entire school year. I don't know if she's eating out every night or something, but that's a bit insane.

The entire affair reeks of nauseating self-righteousness to me. No one can denigrate her accomplishments, but to celebrate her rudeness to her classmates and her own self-consciousness is absurd.

PS: Zach Marks is a self-important politico. Every candidate for YCC runs on the platform of better financial aid. He's hardly unique.

Posted by Yale '10 | June 28, 2007 12:41 PM

As a member of the co-ordinating team for Kasbah and the president of the Yale Belly Dance Society I would like to emphasize the fact that there were 9 groups involved in the planning and execution of the Kasbah event, a party meant to present the variety of Middle Eastern culture to the Yale community in a positive light.

In the original article in the Courant, the author says that "His sense of entitlement made her indignant. ", with regards to a member of the Yale Belly Dance Society who purportedly asked for a tray of brownies. However, this statement is completely inaccurate; as there are no male members in the Society, there is no way that this event could have occurred between Aurora and a Society member. We have asked for the article to be amended in the Courant, and hope that you will do so on this blog too--there is no reason to perpetuate a false negative stereotype of this group.

And thank you to the poster Yale '10 for emphasizing the diversity of the Yale Belly Dance Society. We are a group of strong, talented women from a variety of backgrounds, races and life experiences who have been joined together by a love of dance and culture.

Posted by K | August 17, 2007 11:05 AM

I agree with Yale '10 and K. As both a member of the Yale Belly Dance Society and a student on a significant amount of financial aid, I can attest that it's possible for someone poorer than Aurora to be a member of the group.

Coming from an immigrant family and lower class background myself, I've actually been pleasantly surprised by how little elitism I've encountered at Yale. I have friends there from all different classes/backgrounds/ethnicities. And sure, I don't feel like I always fit in, but I've made close friends and I'm grateful for all the travel opportunities Yale has given me. Like Aurora, I took advantage of the $6,500 summer award to go abroad; in all, Yale has given me at least $16,000 for various travel...you just have to find or make the opportunities and get to know the system, instead of moping all four years about how different you are.

My family makes less than $45,000 a year. Heck, this fall as I enter my senior year, I'm going to be the ONLY person in my family on any sort of income, but I'm not gonna stick up my nose up at my Yale peers or tally deodorant prices.

I'm sorry Aurora couldn't make use of outside scholarships to lower her student income contribution. Any minority student from a lower socioeconomic background who can get into Yale should have no problem securing enough scholarships to cover all student loans. It's just a matter of finding out about them (via high school counselors or personal ambition) and then applying.

Posted by Yale '08 | August 17, 2007 12:21 PM

Having attended Kasbah, I know that the scene (set up) described isn't even correct. There were two rooms set up that night - one for dancing in the dining hall and the other for eating middle eastern food, playing, hanging out, and learning about the middle eastern culture (the davenport common room). Of all the baklava and other goodies offered that evening do you really think someone gave Aurora a hard time for a brownie?? Especially someone of the the YBDS who, along with the other yale societies involved in organizing Kasbah, had access to the food before the rest of the student body?

Just something to consider.

Posted by Yalie09 | August 17, 2007 1:06 PM