2008 Woodie Awards
Making Class an Issue at Smith
Meena Dev
Issue date: 9/22/05 Section: Features
- Page 1 of 3 next >
"Did you have cockroaches in your housing project?" reads one of the numerous flyers advertising the new Smith Association for Class Awareness. It sounds a little ridiculous, but in fact someone actually asked Melissa MacDonald '07 that.
MacDonald, co-chair of the organization, recounts the story. As a HONS, she told a group of first-years a little bit about her background and of growing up in a housing project, and was met with the question now posted on flyers everywhere. She didn't know quite how to respond. MacDonald laughed, and although she was a bit offended, she realized the person was just trying to get more information about where she came from. At the same time, she felt that the event echoed a feeling of alienation that she had previously experienced on several occasions at Smith.
MacDonald grew up outside of Boston in what was primarily a working-class, urban environment. She comes from a single-parent home, and understands what it is like to be on welfare and what it is like to be poor. She is the first person in her family to graduate high school, as well as the first in her family to attend college.
Cara Sharpes, a second year Ada Comstock Scholar, and also co-chair of the organization, originally could not afford to go to college. She transferred from a community college in Harrisonburg, Virginia, where she had attended school by day and worked in restaurants and bars by night. At that time, a private school education seemed beyond her grasp. She hoped to wait until she was twenty-four to apply to a four-year private school, because at that time she would be considered an independent and could thus receive more in financial aid. She describes Harrisonburg as a community dependent on agriculture, a community where many of its residents had never been outside the county. She says class existed, but it was not as pronounced as it is here. Whereas we are very concerned with activism and progressivism at Smith, she describes her previous alma mater as "a very different kind of learning" and not a place where people focused on change.
MacDonald, co-chair of the organization, recounts the story. As a HONS, she told a group of first-years a little bit about her background and of growing up in a housing project, and was met with the question now posted on flyers everywhere. She didn't know quite how to respond. MacDonald laughed, and although she was a bit offended, she realized the person was just trying to get more information about where she came from. At the same time, she felt that the event echoed a feeling of alienation that she had previously experienced on several occasions at Smith.
MacDonald grew up outside of Boston in what was primarily a working-class, urban environment. She comes from a single-parent home, and understands what it is like to be on welfare and what it is like to be poor. She is the first person in her family to graduate high school, as well as the first in her family to attend college.
Cara Sharpes, a second year Ada Comstock Scholar, and also co-chair of the organization, originally could not afford to go to college. She transferred from a community college in Harrisonburg, Virginia, where she had attended school by day and worked in restaurants and bars by night. At that time, a private school education seemed beyond her grasp. She hoped to wait until she was twenty-four to apply to a four-year private school, because at that time she would be considered an independent and could thus receive more in financial aid. She describes Harrisonburg as a community dependent on agriculture, a community where many of its residents had never been outside the county. She says class existed, but it was not as pronounced as it is here. Whereas we are very concerned with activism and progressivism at Smith, she describes her previous alma mater as "a very different kind of learning" and not a place where people focused on change.