Class issues have always interested Lisel Murdock '09. Even as a teenager in Washington state, she was observant of the divides that existed between fellow students; the concept of "some people having to work so much more than others" was both fascinating and troubling to her.
Now, as a sociology major and Class Divide Intern for the Hopkins Center, she has put together the Class Divide Student Creative Project - collections of photographs, paintings, stories and poems from different student artists that examine economic and social class. The topics that the project covers range from a Gulf Coast service trip experience to a thesis project on lower-caste Indians. As they are part of the Hop's three-year Class Divide initiative, the works are not so much pure artistic statements but rather a visual exploration of the have and have-not rift. The mini exhibitions have been visible all around campus - in Novack Cafe, the Hyphen lounge, Collis Center and throughout the Hop and the East Wheelock residence cluster. This pervasiveness is not incidental - Murdock said that she "wanted to put class issues where you can't avoid it and allow conversation to flow between friends and social groups."
This desire to instigate discussion was motivated from the realization that unlike matters of race, culture and sexuality, Dartmouth students typically feel uncomfortable talking about, or even acknowledging, class issues.
"When I ask people about status and class, I can really sense pent-up emotions underneath, but usually these conversations only happen on the surface level and don't go in depth," Murdock said. "There's such a diversity of class on this campus, but most people feel pressured to 'pass' as upper-middle class. Class is hard to define, and some people don't even like to call it class, but whatever you call it, there's definitely a divide."
Delving into the contrast between need and privilege, the Class Divide Project addresses both ends of the spectrum. "It's the wide range - homelessness, luxury, displacement, embracing working class identity or upper elite identity - it's meant to be an open-ended project with a lot of different takes," Murdock said. "Class issues are not just about working-class people, people who can't afford things. They are also about people who can afford things and maybe feel guilty about it."
This specific focus on the general scope and contrast, instead of just one side of the scale, makes the project unique; it is one of the first projects of its kind on a college campus. In the display in Novack, photographs that Sarah Hughes '07 took of families affected by Hurricane Katrina hang next to a painting of iconic Perrier bottles by Lilian Mehrel '09.
The works are not limited to just the United States, either, reflecting the universal existence of class issues. Katharine Blumenthal '06 submitted pictures of struggling road workers in Kashmir. Ying Cheng '09 and Jennifer Wang '07 study the idea of space as a privilege, and their photographs show the discrepancies between spaces occupied by the rich and the poor in European cities. With the project showing the many faces and locations of class issues, Murdock hopes that the project will motivate Dartmouth students to think outside the Dartmouth bubble. "Here we have people mowing our lawns, cleaning our toilets, doing everything for us, but people aren't making it outside," she said.
Murdock started working on the project Winter term and spent up to 60 hours a week assembling and hanging up the submissions that she received. She also contributed a poem about farm families, inspired by her experience interviewing working families in the Upper Valley. Murdock said she has received a lot of positive feedback.
"Just people telling me that they saw the project is the best feedback I can get. Even if someone is upset by it, it is still good feedback because they're thinking about it," she said. "Hopefully [the project] will act as a venue for discussion, and eventually relate to actions to make change."
The Project will officially come down today, but the East Wheelock, Novack and Hyphen displays will remain in place throughout the term.
