Speak Never and Hold your Peace

Privilege Feeds Marginalization

As children, we enjoyed dipping plastic wands into a mixture of soap, detergent, and water and marveling at the shiny, round globes that flew around us. Unlike the shiny, fun bubbles of our childhood, there are different kinds of bubbles that we see on campus. Bubbles of privilege are prevalent among the majority of students.

Many times I look at the people surrounding me and the students in my classes. What I noticed initially is that there aren’t a lot of people on campus that look like me, making me feel conscious of my differences coming from an Indian background compared to Santa Clara’s dominantly white student body. And I’m not the only one that feels this way.

Santa Clara has an alarming issue: many students don’t feel comfortable discussing their social and financial backgrounds, experiences, and struggles on campus amidst a student body possessing financial and racial privileges.

Jesuit universities like Santa Clara boast about their campus’ deep respect for diversity and the variety of different opinions on campus, as well as student kinship that allows for difficult conversations. But those values don’t seem to be expressed in our student body due to a fear of social rejection. For minority students, this feeling is a way of life.

The potential for isolation drives fear– the fear of speaking out, the fear of expressing your experiences, the fear of being ostracized. This fear festers under the currents of financial and racial privilege as the minority’s experiences of marginalization are stuck in limbo.

Santa Clara announced a $1,656 increase in tuition from $55,224 in the 2021-2022 year. Not only is the tuition gradually increasing each year, but this is also an astronomical amount compared to the $13,752 for the University of California and $5,742 for Cal State Universities. Factoring in the thousands per year for housing, textbooks, and personal expenses, the significant gap–that continues to increase–between tuition rates, being able to attend college is a privilege in itself.

Some students at Santa Clara live a completely foreign life to those who are more privileged. College tuition is more expensive than ever, but the difference between attending a private university versus a public one can rack up to an exorbitant amount. This gives Santa Clara a pressing wealth gap issue and a resource gap favoring the privileged.

The privileged who can afford these rates without worrying about paying for their next meal or choosing between completing their assignments, work, or sleep are sheltered from the marginalized students who need more support than what the university currently offers.

In the fall of 2020, only 32% of Santa Clara’s first-year students received need-based financial aid. Santa Clara is notorious for stingy financial aid packages, despite expensive rates for everything on campus. The financially disadvantaged are a minority on campus, but the administration needs to implement more programs and policies to ease the burden on the minority.

Only certain students can afford to attend this university. This creates two extremes on the same spectrum; many students come from a higher tax bracket, leaving those with less financial privilege feeling like outsiders. For these “outsiders,” the financial privilege of the majority leaves them reluctant to express their perspectives coming from a minority.

Humans naturally want to fit in. We form social groups and establish relationships that benefit an entire community. This is especially highlighted on a college campus where a lack of community can create a disconnect from campus life. But should fitting in come at the risk of shedding your identity and background?

Participants in diverse campus organizations, such as LEAD, commonly censor themselves among less diverse groups. Members of the LEAD program are first-generation students, making them the first in their families to attend higher education. Many of these students share the hardship of forging their own path to Santa Clara.

LEAD guides these students through college life, providing academic and career opportunities, advising, tutoring, and a community of similar students that they would not have been given otherwise. Furthermore, these students tend to have similar financial, familial, and racial backgrounds because of their first-generation status.

Despite the community LEAD builds, many of its members have had instances on campus where they felt like their background wouldn’t be understood by other students with vastly different circumstances.

A sophomore LEAD student who asked to stay anonymous said being a part of the program has helped her find community with people who come from a similar background.

“That being said, it has also highlighted the stark contrasts between my social positionality and that of the larger school population,” the sophomore said. “Topics of class, race, and familial background become a topic that I feel I must shy away from in order to be fully accepted into the larger community.”

Another LEAD sophomore who asked to remain anonymous as well pointed out the struggle of attending a primarily white institution.

“When I came to Santa Clara, I became extra aware of the fact that I was a Mexican woman,— someone who couldn’t afford as much as most of the population, someone who was bilingual but wasn’t perfect in either languages, and it’s easy to feel less than when there’s such a large difference and privilege throughout the school.”

Events like the Embrace Session that are conducted in our first year at Santa Clara send a powerful message representing minority groups. During the small group sessions, we collectively learned about each other’s struggles including our family lives, financial situations, and minority status. Open communication and difficult questions result in a striking event for everyone involved as we break the metaphorical bubble that shelters us from the world outside of privilege.

This bubble needs to be broken throughout the campus, not just at a once-a-year event for the first years. We need to incorporate more group discussions involving multi-cultural groups and underprivileged students into our daily lives.

The university’s commitment to making financial support available for economically disadvantaged students and incorporating more events to celebrate cultural diversity will be key in bridging the wealth and diversity gap on campus. As a community, we can look towards positively changing our school’s attitude towards the minority by placing more emphasis on organizations like LEAD and group discussions that break the barriers we have created.