The College's Economic Equity Initiative invited class-equality activist Felice Yeskel to work with faculty and administrators to understand the implications of classism, a largely unrecognized prejudice, according to Yeskel. Yeskel held several meetings and workshops that examined classism at Dartmouth and explored the culture-shock many face upon entering college.
"If you want to end classism, the first thing you have to do is get people to acknowledge that it exists," Yeskel said in an interview with The Dartmouth. "That's not the end, but it's a beginning." Yeskel is the founder and director of Class Action, a non-profit organization aiming to eradicate classism.
Yeskel ran workshops on classism and spoke with undergraduate and graduate students, faculty, staff, administrators, union support staff members and other members of the community during her three-day residency.
Yeskel led a dinner workshop for students and faculty who were the first in their families to attend college on Thursday.
"I feel like at Dartmouth there's discussion about a lot of other issues but [the issue of] first generation college students is often overlooked," Flor Marie Cruz '10, who attended the event, said. "For something to be done the administration needs to recognize the need to do something for these students."
The workshop's attendees discussed adopting a mentoring program for first-generation college students or hosting a workshop for these students during orientation, according to Cruz.
Yeskel asked attendees to identify similarities among members of the group through an opening activity she called "Common Ground," according to Ian Tapu '08 who attended the workshop. Yeskel also asked attendees to write down positive and negative aspects of being first-generation college students, and she combined responses on a board for discussion, Tapu said.
The workshop continued for half an hour longer than its expected two hour duration, and many students wished it could have continued further, Tapu said.
Yeskel led another workshop on Friday to sensitize class deans to issues surrounding class, Lisa Thum, dean for the Class of 2008, said. Yeskel led a discussion on values associated with different classes, such as authority and entitlement.
"[Yeskel] divided class into owning class, professional middle class and working class," Thum said. "We talked about how Dartmouth was in the owning class as far as our philosophy and our loyalty to the College and the members of the College."
Thum, who was also a first-generation college student, found that the workshop validated the steps she had already been taking to understand students' backgrounds, she said. She added that she was pleased to see Dartmouth take steps to understand how class affects students, she added.
"I came here about 19 years ago, and I kind of felt that I had to hide the fact that I was first generation, and in the last 10 years I feel people are a lot more open to talking about some of the issues," she said.
Yeskel, a first-generation college student herself, came up with the idea for such a workshop several years ago in a discussion group she was leading about class, she said.
"The very first cross-class dialogue group I facilitated had a first generation college student," Yeskel said. "She started talking about how alienated and angry she had felt in college."
This is the third year Class Action has come to Dartmouth and Yeskel will return to campus in May. The Economic Equity Initiative is a program run by the Office of Pluralism and Leadership, the Office of Institutional Diversity and Equity and the Tucker Foundation.
