The Hill News received this letter in response to an article from our March 8 issue, “Students Concerned About Rising Tuition.”
Dear Low-Income Students,
Last week I picked up a copy of The Hill News, and maybe the same familiar panic set in with you as I read, “Students Concerned About Rising Tuition.” It’s my senior year, and I feel as if coming out as economically underprivileged with my peers has been harder for me than coming out as queer. I’m hoping to serve two purposes with this article; I would like to call attention to the struggles of low-income students, and more importantly, to my fellow low-income peers: I see you, you deserve to be here, and St. Lawrence needs you.
Before I go much further I want to address that my experience from a white, rural, low-income family isn’t the universal experience of low-income students, and issues of income inequality, homelessness, food insecurity, etc., disproportionately affect people of color, queer people, and other marginalized identities. My racial and economic identity are inextricably linked, and my whiteness is a still a privilege while I experience class adversity. The identities and experiences of low-income and financially struggling people are diverse, and poor doesn’t have one look. I want to recognize the value and significance of these differences without dismissing them, because I think being low-income can be isolating enough here.
The popular questions so many of us get when first meeting other Laurentians is, “how did you find St. Lawrence?” I remember getting the acceptance letter in the spring of my senior year of high school and not even opening the huge ‘Congratulations’ envelope, because I knew how expensive tuition was at St. Lawrence. I didn’t want to get my hopes up of being accepted but have my economic situation be a barrier. I’m here because St. Lawrence gave me the best financial scholarship, and I’m grateful for that, and so grateful for my education, but the bed of roses has come with many thorns.
My dad dropped me off in the fall in our rusted minivan and we parked among a sea of shining Jeeps, BMWs, and Audis. My first few weeks, it felt like the status-symbol brands were just a reminder that this place wasn’t for me. How was I going to stack up against the students who came from some of the best private boarding schools in the country? We have this idea in America that wealth is the highest goal, and to be rich means the person and the family are the hardest working, smartest, and most successful people. For years I’ve watched my peers go on breaks to Europe, some sunny island, or to the expensive ski resorts out west, while I went home to work.
Before you think I wrote this to hate on rich kids, let me start on my second point. It’s taken me years to feel included as a part of the St. Lawrence community, and I’m not hating on people from different circumstances. I want to now acknowledge that this place is for low-income students too. We are some of the hardest working, most determined, intellectual, thoughtful, compassionate, and most courageous students. St. Lawrence needs us. Diversity of thought baby, that’s liberal arts. What we bring to this community, to classrooms, conversations, and clubs is immeasurable and priceless. Low-income students have had to work hard, think smarter, and fight to be where we are, and we do it with thoughtfulness, as we see every day what the lives of the more financially privileged are every day. I think about my class every day.
Dear Low-Income Students, you deserve to be here, and you worked your ass off to get here. You deserve to speak up when in some econ or gov class we start talking about income inequality like it’s just an impersonal idea, or that you’re not even there.
This goes for all sorts of other situations; when the situation becomes uncomfortably classist, I just want to remind you that you’re valid and an important asset to this community, even when it doesn’t feel welcoming. I will see your academic accomplishments when you didn’t have the funds to pay to get into the honor society, I will see you when you could afford whatever cords cost to go with our caps and gowns, I will see your accomplishment when you don’t get the grade you wanted because of everything else going on in your world that made the exam even harder. To students of more privileged economic backgrounds, if reading this made you uncomfortable, I’d like to welcome you to sit with that discomfort, and then I’d like to challenge to you ask yourself what you can do to make our community of Laurentians for Life more inclusive.