In most fraternities, brothers fail to pay their dues in full. Faced with high demand for beer but with little capital, some social chairs send blitz after blitz to their house, shaming those members who still have not paid.
I understand why some social chairs use this kind of peer pressure. They assume that the brothers are lazy they only need to run to the bank to acquire the money. And for those unmotivated students with the funds and not the motivation to retrieve them, the jeering from their peers means little. But, for the brothers working to buy books, food and pay off loans, it's a constant reminder of a fact about class at Dartmouth: If you think money doesn't matter here, it's almost always because you and your family enjoy a certain level of wealth.
Many fraternities offer members the opportunity to work in the house in exchange for reduced dues. This accommodation reflects one of the many ways that Dartmouth students confront issues of economic disparity well on the macro level: need-blind admission, special guidance for students who are the first in their family to attend college, scholarships versus loans. What we stumble to acknowledge, however, is how class differences pervade our personal lives in very tangible ways.
When a Topside employee tells most students that an item is on DA$H, they barely notice. Yet some students turn around, put the item back and walk to CVS to avoid Topside's outrageously over-inflated prices. Not all students lavishly spend the rest of their DBA at the end of the term, and they don't consider the funds to be play money. Reading a blitz on your Blackberry may be the norm on campus, but it is by no means average. How quickly you expect an employee at Novack to make your latte probably depends on whether you've ever worked in the service industry before. Your personal stake in financing a Dartmouth education may affect how often you go to class, how seriously you take your academics and what you chose to study.
Just because we don't walk around with our family's net worth inscribed on our chests doesn't mean we don't project a certain image. Most people here are considerate enough or have been socially groomed adequately enough to know that you don't flaunt your wealth overtly. A student raving about his trip to the Vineyard' projects an intentional, easily understood message, but not all students choose to advertise themselves so overtly.
Wealth doesn't need to be spoken for when it speaks for itself. Buzzwords such as "Exeter," "Upper East Side," and "they're both consultants" connote a certain lifestyle; "public school," "inner-city" and "she's a third grade teacher and my dad doesn't work" mean something else entirely.
Everyone knows the lines they need to repeat when encountered with a class issue directly: "Diversity matters," "Students from all backgrounds deserve the same education," "Not having enough money shouldn't prevent you from coming to Dartmouth." These flat statements engage the vague idea of privilege. But, that is very different from recognizing the tangible, mundane ways that class differences impact students and being able to engage those differences appropriately.
The wealthy among us are not conceited, nor are the disadvantaged righteous. My friends whose families have buildings named after them are some of the most kind-hearted people I've met here. But, students whose family fortunes vary by literally billions of dollars coexist in the same space. That spectrum of wealth has concrete consequences, from who launders your clothes to how well you know Jim, the Gusanoz delivery man.
