On the one hand, it's very good that the most recent "landscape analysis" released by First-Gen Forward this week is entirely about the socio-political landscape and the chaos and uncertainty of federal funding and federal policy for first-generation students on campus. Prior reports from this national advocacy group have rarely mentioned the politics of educational funding for vulnerable groups to focus instead on fine-tuning campus mentoring and financial and academic supports. Even though these support programs were funded to serve only a fraction of eligible students, these regular reports from First-Gen Forward focused instead on getting better at the work that campuses do within the resources they had.
So I'm glad that this week's report makes clear that the education of poor and working-class students is subject to the political will of much more powerful others (the same powerful others who have long neglected public K-12 funding for poor and working-class students). Programming recommended by First-Gen Forward has been almost entirely apolitical, focusing instead on celebrating student "resilience" and accomplishments under the guidance of caring support staff. But the current rapid, frequent, and disarming budget cuts, staff firings, and public discourse justifying both have made power and the relative powerlessness of vulnerable students very visible.
So this focus on the politics of education as social mobility is good.
And yet.
First, this week's landscape analysis leads out with emphatic insistence that the majority of First Gen programming is in entirely different campus units than "DEI" work, and thus may/should be left alone. I try and fail to understand the wisdom or even morality of a strategy of trying to stay afloat – in isolation – while vital supports for any students are decimated. I do understand that this was a strategy of differentiating programs to try to protect funding. I also ponder the power of allies in struggles against power.
Second, I want to look closely at how students are positioned in this report. Programming recommended by First-Gen Forward commonly positions students as relatively passive recipients of "celebration", inspiration and direct support but almost never as beings with agency and a collective political voice. Though we have decades of examples of successful student activism on a range of issues, I've yet to see First-Gen Forward recommend that poor and working-class students be mentored in organizing, speaking in a collective voice, or learning how policy is made (and therefore changed) on campus or beyond. Indeed, in this programming, students rarely speak at all except in gratitude for abundant support and opportunity. They rarely speak as part of this programming about the structural inequalities that shaped their childhoods and their schooling.
For this new Landscape Analysis on the current socio-political climate, students were interviewed as part of focus groups. But I stopped and read twice when I came to these words:
The authors of the report did not find reason to ask students about the politics of the moment in their daily lives as students and members of vulnerable communities. Staff was assumed to be speaking on their behalf.
But then, as students DO bring up their backgrounds and their relative powerlessness in the face of power, the threats to them and their communities are described as "on their face value, do not have to do with education". The report then quotes two students on "shifting immigration policies", one reporting a negative comment from a peer (as anti-immigrant sentiments are new experience) and the other expressing gratitude for campus support for immigrants. The report then returns to staff quotes.
It's my experience that these students know --at least at some level – that powerful others often denied them access to and safety within quality schools on the basis of their race, social class, ethnicity, immigration status, and/or LGBTQIA status. I wish that the authors had said much more about students raising these issues when being interviewed as students and the connections that the students see as they navigate college as members of increasingly vulnerable communities.
The report then ends with recommendations of what to do now – recommendations for staff, administrators, policy makers, and students.
Other campus actors are encouraged to be more vocal advocates in political decision making and campus advocacy. Students are not encouraged to make their voices heard but to seek more support. Rather than organizing as so many other student groups have done, first-gen students might settle instead for community building and encouragement:
So yes, on the one hand, the acknowledgement of power and politics in this landscape analysis about the education of poor and working-class students is welcomed.
On the other hand, the short-term tactic of trying to protect funding by distancing First-Gen programs from "DEI" (that distancing happened long before this moment) was at best shortsighted as we now witness the expected further cuts in TRIO programs.
And it's disappointing that students themselves are given little credit for understanding how power operates in their vulnerable communities or for having the capacity to speak back to power.
All of this comes back to how campuses can best support poor and working-class students who are first in their families to get to college.
If "first-gen" is primarily about students who do not yet fully understand the college game (because families couldn't teach them) and also struggle to pay the rent, then mentoring, inspirational guest speakers, and math tutoring will be enough.
If, on the other hand, "first-gen" status is about how the powerful deny poor and working-class students the resources and information that they need to succeed, we'd do well to envision math tutoring alongside projects to teach everyone on campus about classism and class inequalities and to build collective political voice, agency, and the refusal of injustice.
This report begins to acknowledge power wielded against vulnerable students now that this power is more painfully visible. It's a welcome but incomplete reckoning with the structural obstacles that have long been placed in the paths of poor and working-class students seeking class mobility.
