There is one scene in “The Great Gatsby” that has stayed with me throughout my college experience. Nick, the book’s Midwestern narrator, attends a party at Jay Gatsby’s house, and finds an owl-eyed man murmuring in Gatsby’s library, amazed that all of the books are real. Gatsby wants his guests, members of the East Coast elite, to consider him an “Oxford man,” a nouveau riche who can nonchalantly exchange pleasantries with old money. However, the character of Gatsby, the reader later finds, is a façade. Throughout the novel, the mask that he had carefully crafted for himself continues to deteriorate, and his upward mobility is stymied by his own misplaced ambitions as well as the insurmountable sociocultural expectations and barriers of the Roaring Twenties.
Many of us, myself included, chose to attend Dartmouth because we believed that an Ivy League affiliation would help us climb the socioeconomic ladder to professional dignity. Dartmouth has surpassed my expectations. During my college career, my status as a Dartmouth student, backed by recommendations from faculty members who know me and care about my future, has opened many doors, in fields as diverse as academic research and book publishing. I have no doubt that the College has given me more opportunities — financial and academic — than any of my other Ivy options ever could have.
But something that has continued to flummox me during my four years here are the implicit skills and knowledge that I have been expected to know in the social situations I’ve been exposed to since attending Dartmouth. For instance, when I first dined at the Canoe Club — one of the nicest restaurants that I had ever been to at the time — I was unsure of what to do with the folded white napkin. I let it sit in front of me until a friend leaned over and drew attention to it. This was a nice restaurant, he said, and I was supposed to put the white cloth on my lap. I proceeded to do so, embarrassed by the gap in my cultural knowledge, and more than a bit peeved for having been expected to know how to behave when neither schooling nor upbringing had prepared me for this occasion.
Later, my sister was invited to an all-expenses paid leadership conference hosted by The Blackstone Group. My mother, whose last experience in Western dining was a single disagreeable trip to the Olive Garden in 2008, urged my sister to treat one of her friends, a daughter of a high-level Oliver Wyman executive, to a dinner at a upscale restaurant to learn all she could about silverware.
Embarrassing anecdotes of fine dining aside, students who originate from lower socioeconomic class and first-generation immigrant backgrounds have often not been privy to the sort of cultural grooming that others at Dartmouth have picked up throughout their lives. At best, this leads to awkward situations, and at worst, feelings as if one does not belong in this rarefied sphere of money and privilege.
Fortunately, Dartmouth does have resources available to students who come from underprivileged backgrounds. Dartmouth’s First Year Student Enrichment Program provides mentorship and programming for first-generation college students, and the Rockefeller Center offers students the opportunity to gain professional soft skills, like dining etiquette. I would, however, argue for more programming and events specifically tailored to socioeconomically disadvantaged students, especially for those hoping to go into careers in fields such as finance, academia and science, in which mentorship and networks could contribute significantly to their success.
This could be most effectively arranged by existing campus centers such as the Center for Professional Development and the Rockefeller Center, perhaps assisted by a knowledgeable authority, like the Office of Pluralism and Leadership. Pairing successful alumni with students who lack professional role models or advocates in their families or immediate communities could allow them to acquire skills and knowledge that cannot be gained through normal academic course offerings. Particularly since class transcends many other demographic delineations, offering programs and mentoring for those from financially disadvantaged backgrounds would better enable a wide array of Dartmouth students to pursue their professional ambitions by adding cultural capital to their academic foundation.
