Talk challenges profs. to re-examine diversity

The weeks following Spring Break are a time when Facebook albums abound with pictures of extravagant vacations. Students celebrate their return to “Club Midd” with a few trips to the Grille, enjoy the warm weather at the shops in Burlington and begin to look forward to summer plans: language school, going abroad or an incredible upaid summer internship. Yet, these activities are all very costly. Can professors assume that such behavior is the norm for all students? And how do these assumptions affect their teaching?

Rebecca Harper ’11 questions the prevalence of this post-Spring Break phenomenon. On April 5 and 6, she challenged the invisibility of socioeconomic diversity at Middlebury through a series of workshops titled “Class in the Classroom.” These talks brought students and faculty together with guest speaker Rachel Rybaczuk, a doctoral candidate in sociology at UMass Amherst, who returned to continue a discussion that began at a similar lecture last year.

Participants in the workshop tried to answer one pressing question: what happens when the admissions office brings together privileged students hailing from elite prep schools (those who have traveled the world and never worried about the sticker price of a Middlebury education) with others who can afford to come here only through the generosity of the financial aid office? Is social class at Middlebury a legitimate issue? Harper and a growing contingent of the college community believe it is.

During the hour-long gathering, Rybaczuk facilitated a lively discussion among students and faculty, emphasizing the importance of recognizing socioeconomic diversity, especially in academics. She said, “There are ways the institution tries to neutralize differences around class and give people the same opportunity, but there are still ways the difference shows up, and a major place where that’s playing out is in the classroom.”

Students and faculty discussed their experiences, many of which centered on the idea of social and cultural capital. Though institutions can often minimize disparity in financial capital, creating equality in social and cultural capital is not so easy, and is perhaps impossible. Often, financially privileged students can more readily understand classroom references to cultural topics, for example, art and travel. Students who have seen Florentine architecture in person can more readily contribute to a classroom discussion on the topic than a student who has never traveled abroad, thus enabling them to receive better grades and a richer classroom experience.

Harper said she organized the workshops in response to this very problem. She heard a fellow student express frustration at her sense of “invisibility” at Middlebury, which the student attributed in large part to a poor background.

Rybaczuk challenged professors to consider the way in which their curriculum might reflect an ignorance of socioeconomic diversity in Middlebury classrooms. She cited the fact that virtually all class readings are written by scholars with a Ph.D. Rybaczuk suggested that this might indicate a lack of multiple perspectives, namely the perspective of the lower classes. Shawna Shapiro, visiting assistant professor of Writing agreed, and said, “Is the notion of liberal arts, in a way, elitist?”

Amy Kwak ’12 believes one of the most pressing concerns is the lack of dialogue surrounding this issue. She feels that class issues seem more invisible than they actually are because people pretend they do not exist. “There are a lot of misconceptions about it, and also not much information, so there is misinformation,” said Kwak.

Harper was pleased with the results of the workshops and expressed hope that this dialogue continues to grow. “I thought it went really well, but I did feel like we just grazed the surface.” Rybaczuk agreed, describing the students’ level of engagement as “inspiring,” but she was careful to note that the workshops were a “very preliminary first step.”