We know that many low-income/ working class students work to conceal their backgrounds on campus to avoid judgment and stigma. Yet in decades of working on campuses that serve these students, watching campus social media posts about "first-gen pride", or reading the research about helping first-generation/low-income students "belong" on campus, I've never seen a campus openly ask more privileged students (or faculty and staff) to stop judging and stigmatizing their peers.
That is, until I saw this BBC news story about Edinburgh University telling students to stop being "snobs" toward their peers.
For all the differences between the U.S. and Great Britain, the experiences described in this article will resonate with many students on U.S. campuses: More privileged students vigilantly monitor markers of class difference: (clothing, accent, background knowledge) and then stand in judgment of students they deem different. More privileged students assume their advantages were because of harder work. More privileged students are comfortably naive about social worlds outside of their own, while assuming that their worlds are the norm.
So Edinburgh University [somewhat softly] said "enough".
Their new guidelines in support of inclusivity of "socio-economic disadvantage" focus on microagressions. Students can find discussion here of their own relative advantages, read brief descriptions of broader class inequalities, and find advice about talking across class differences with respect. There is a reading list to learn more, including some policy issues beyond the classism within interpersonal interactions.
It's a basic set of guidelines, but even this basic acknowledgement of classism on campus is a step too far for most U.S. colleges and universities. In years of looking, I've rarely found DEI resources for social-class inclusivity. In the many things I've read about the importance of helping first-generation students feel that they "belong" on campus, I have read almost nothing about how everyday class antagonisms can be part of them doubting whether the belong in the first place.
The Edinburgh site is a start.
What would it take for more campuses to even begin these conversations? To provide even these basic resources for people on campus?
