This article is composed of highlighted quotes from an interview with an anonymous Bowdoin student. It is a detailed look into one Bowdoin student’s thoughts on wealth and its impact on their lives. It is color-coded by theme. Blue represents the development of the wealth stigma based on one’s previous and current friend groups and environments. Red represents the perception of material goods and actions as symbols of wealth and the conclusions drawn from that information. Purple represents the notion that wealth is a challenging and uncomfortable topic that people avoid, due to its stigmatization.
“Wealth is definitely not something that I considered as much until I went to Bowdoin.”
“Where I’m from, it’s just a middle class town. And so [wealth] was never something that I guess I really considered. We had people who were maybe low income or poor, but there wasn’t really a huge difference between everyone where I’m from in Indiana.”
“But then at Bowdoin, you see people who come from backgrounds. For example, the GCS kids are even getting money to go to Bowdoin versus kids who can pay the full tuition, and their families make over $630,000 a year.”
In response to whether our campus is socioeconomically diverse: “Yeah, for sure. Well, yeah, I don’t know. It is, it is. I don’t, I just don’t know really. I guess you have to define diverse.”
“I think that the people that I’ve surrounded myself with [at Bowdoin] happened to not be, for the most part, people whose families make more money [than mine], and so I thought that there are more [people of my socioeconomic class at Bowdoin] than there actually are.”
“If I would have gone to a state school, Macs are a huge [wealth symbol], but because THRIVE gives Macbooks… they aren’t really a symbol anymore at Bowdoin specifically.”
“[Wealth symbols are] kind of just little things; people going out repeatedly, or taking trips to Boston, or where they go over spring break and seeing what their posts are on social media.”
“[My wealthy friend] would just throw away things that were new or not used.”
“One time I was having a conversation about someone else who had an experience where their roommate had asked them if they could pay them to do their laundry and stuff… What a crazy concept… It’s interesting how they just see the world in a completely different way.”
“One girl was sitting there who I didn’t know very well, but [she] was starting to get incorporated in our friend group. She got really offended [when we were talking about wealthy people stereotypes]: ‘not everyone’s who’s rich acts that way… I don’t like to tell people that my family has money, because then I can surprise them with things.’”
“We talk about privilege a lot at Bowdoin, but it’s never directed at anyone [in particular.]”
“I do notice that a lot of kids who are within the same socioeconomic status tend to group together, and I think that a lot of that is just due to experiences that you’ve had growing up, or now you just kind of live a different way. Maybe see things a different way. And I don’t know, I guess it’s just a part of life, the way I see it.”
“I lived near Chicago, so when I go there, I’d see things like Canada Goose jackets and stuff. But in terms of my hometown, I think that you wouldn’t really notice when people had more money, because a lot of us lived in the same way. I think you noticed more so when people didn’t have money by the type of clothes people wear.”
“I feel like a lot of people at Bowdoin are abnormally attractive, more so than where I’m from. This could relate to our hair products, skin products, being able to get food that’s healthy, or seeing dermatologists. I don’t know. It’s weird. That’s one conversation that I had, including my friend who has money. And she agreed. That’s all.”
“When talking about privilege or anything like that, I feel like usually [people with wealth are] the people who go quiet and maybe step out of the room or just kind of disappear a little bit. Or they never talk about themselves when we bring up those conversations. Because I know that a lot of kids feel like they’re not going to be liked, or people are going to think of them in a different way.”
“One of our friends ordered several pairs of the same shoe with different colors; she told us about it casually.”
“Some of my friends and I will go out and guilt ourselves for buying something that’s $10. So [ordering the same pair of shoes in different colors is] just kind of hard to conceptualize.”
“I had to work towards making sure that I didn’t seem like I was judging her or anything [for her wealthy status.]”
“[We remind our upper class friends] about not being able to do something sometimes: ‘is that gonna cost this much?’”
“I think [conversations about wealth do] get easier [with more repetition] just because I think we both realize that we’re not against each other. It’s just more about having an open conversation and trying to understand where we’re all coming from.”
“I guess [fixing the stigma around wealth is] just having conversations with kids who are wealthy and getting to know them and realizing that they’re people who’ve had hardships, [too]. And it’s hard to balance because obviously some kids are maybe going to fit the stereotype, but not everyone does.”
“For me [initiating conversations about wealth has] been easiest to do naturally, just as it comes up and then finding points to open the conversation even further.”
“I didn’t hear [conversations about wealth] back at home, but I hear it from a lot of different students at Bowdoin.”
“Going into any normal conversation I would still have a lot of anxiety [talking about wealth] because I don’t know what they’re going to say back to me.”