I would never have thought that I could feel the slightest bit of embarrassment for receiving financial aid. In fact, I don’t think anyone should feel that way when working towards a four-year degree at an Ivy League institution.
That idea was shattered starting at 5:28 p.m. on July 7. I was walking down Tuck Drive and received what seemed to be another automated message from Dartmouth’s Office of Financial Aid telling students on financial aid that a new survey would be added to our scholarship requirements.
Little did I know, it was anything but the usual email. The names of hundreds of students who were receiving aid for the academic year were visible for everyone to see.
I was floored. I was distraught and flat-out angry. It seemed that our privacy was nothing to our administration. I don’t want to debate how this could have happened. A 255-year-old institution respected across the world couldn’t protect the privacy of students who might not have wanted this fact about them revealed.
I have many questions. For example, we have an email list in the Blitz system that blindly categorizes all undergraduates. Why can’t the same be done for all undergraduate students on financial aid? Why did it seem like all the names were typed out individually? Why can’t Financial Aid automate messages to be scheduled ahead of time, so that faulty errors like this don’t happen?
Will I have to constantly think people are looking at me differently because I need some money to attend college without my parents having to shell out $200,000 a year to send two kids to college? Will I have to live with the undying fear that I’m now somehow “othered” for having assistance?
Because of who I am, this isn’t a concern – I simply don’t care. If Dartmouth students are letting these thoughts wander their heads, then this isn’t the school of community-oriented, life-loving granola kids I thought it was. Frankly, it’s easy to say we shouldn’t be ashamed to be on aid. I’m not ashamed to be on aid because I’m proud of my parents who let go of everything they knew to build a future for themselves and their kids in a country oceans away from their home. If anything, my financial aid status is a reflection of their generational struggle, work ethic and consistent resilience. I won’t trade their sacrifices to feel even the slightest bit of shame. How could I?
Yet, I understand that many kids on that list didn’t want that deeply personal fact revealed to the entirety of campus. I can’t blame them. I’ll admit that when I was reading through the list of kids attached to the email with me, I was shocked. Then, I began to wonder why. Why am I shocked that the person sitting in front of my astronomy class also might need a thousand extra dollars to attend this school? It’s because Dartmouth students have preconceived notions that aid-receiving students look and act a certain way.
That email shattered all of those expectations. Nobody can just look at a whiter person in a “more respected” Greek house and think, “oh yeah, they look like they’re rich.” It made me realize that this is a dangerous way of thinking that detracts from why we’re here: to make the world a better place than we might have found it. If we continue to believe that we can assume how many pennies someone carries in their pockets, then we’ll become nothing more than money-counting machines.
The email instructed us to write thank you letters to donors who support the institutional endowment. Let me do that here.
I want to say thank you to the Office of Financial Aid for showing us that no one should be judged for carrying themselves in the ways they do. No one should be judged for breaking into certain spaces at Dartmouth and automatically have wealth or poverty attached to their name. If anything, I respect my peers who need financial aid even more for breaking into those hard-to-reach places. I applaud our shared story that no single checked box could ever sum up.
To the office that failed us, thank you for reminding me that so many like me are here, even if it’s unexpected of us. We’re here without mega-billionaire parents who donate buildings. We’re here without a private jet in Abu Dhabi and yachts on the Mediterranean. We’re here because dollars and dimes could never dictate whether or not we deserve our place at Dartmouth. I won’t feel sorry for that, and neither should anyone else.
Sud Paul is a member of the Class of 2027. Guest articles represent the views of their author(s), which are not necessarily those of The Dartmouth.
