The group Class Action has been doing great work around ending legacy admissions at elite campuses. There's much to admire in their recent conference for student leaders at Stanford, Harvard, Georgetown, Cornell, Columbia, Princeton, Yale and others, all of whom are working to increase socio-economic diversity in higher education at the campus and state levels.
One of Class Action's founders, Ryan Cielowski is reported to have thrifted his suit when he testified in the California Legislature in favor of ending legacy admissions across the state. In explaining the power of this student organizing conference, Ryan spoke truth: “Universities aren’t doing enough to promote socioeconomic diversity, to promote public welfare, and [students] are ready to mobilize and organize against it.”
The work to promote socioeconomic diversity can happen on every campus, not just those in which wealthy students are admitted because others in their families had preceded them. Every campus could go beyond supporting poor and working-class students to better "fit in" to also support their learning to change the systems in which they'll never fully fit.
(Another organization called Class Action sponsors a First Generation Student Summit on the east coast every year).
