By Marcus Ribeiro
Serving as a bridge between people from all walks of life, Bowdoin attempts to have a diverse campus, with people of different ethnicities, sexualities, political ideologies, and socioeconomic classes making up our student body. However, especially as we focus on the socio-economic class of Bowdoin students, we start to see the extreme variance in some people’s prior school life, accounting for varying views on the stigma of wealth.
From questioning first-years, with less recency bias, we set out to understand their personal view on the stigma of wealth and its prevalence. However, since every student has had different life experiences shaping them and in turn affecting their view on the wealth stigma, this article will explore students’ views on the stigma of wealth in a contextualized fashion.
One distinction between students’ history of schooling was the type of school that they previously attended, with private high school dynamics deviating from Bowdoin’s. According to The Bowdoin Orient, “roughly 49 percent of [Bowdoin’s Class of 2023] attended private high school, including private day schools, boarding schools, and parochial schools.” Upon learning this in class, a Bowdoin student stated that this was to her surprise as “It’s very common for wealthy people to have a larger voice in systems and social systems. It was the same at my other school, we always heard from the rich, preppy girls.” Relative to the mostly upper-middle-class school in Virginia that she previously attended, Bowdoin truly felt diverse, and that is exemplary in how there is a dominant rich voice on campus. Furthermore, it seems like wealth was such a powerful feature at select private schools that “some people go out of their way to look rich and wealthy,” as one student said, in contrast to Bowdoin students. Private schools such as these that many Bowdoin students previously attended looked to have exacerbated divides in wealth to a higher degree.
Similarly, one’s family wealth allows for students to have different lifestyles. Although Bowdoin students love to classify themselves as part of the “middle class,” the lower and upper echelons of this term are excessively flexible when used by students. One student bluntly defines her wealth status by starting the interview off by mentioning “I know I come from a very privileged background as far as money goes.” Another student expanded on this and referencing the wealth of those in her hometown as well: “I’ve lived in the same place my whole life with a lot of people who come from similar economic backgrounds as me. Being able to talk to other people about it [at Bowdoin] helps me realize my own privilege.” Acknowledging the array of socioeconomic class at Bowdoin is a step that many of its wealthier student body must initially take, as their attitudes towards wealth might not be as widely supported. However, students who are not in the upper-middle-class make a different transition, trying to get accustomed to markedly materialistic society. As one student noted, “Well, 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 and then but there wasn’t really a huge difference between everyone where I’m from in Indiana.” Campuses’ perceivably excessive wealth can serve as a culture shock to these students initially, paving the way for students with similar life experiences, due in part to socioeconomic status, to form relationships with one another.
Another perpetrator of wealth stigmatization is the symbols of wealth in a society, and this has faced varying changes for students, with some owing it to their school location’s differing weather patterns or much more. As a J.O.B. (student from just outside of Boston) described it, “you could definitely see wealth in people a lot more easily [in high school]. It’s like the cars they drive, the clothes they wear, or even just their backpacks.” If students are simply unable to afford to have better material wealth and this can cause them to be looked at differently by others, especially those used to being in wealthy communities. Cars, which can cost significantly more than a piece of clothing or backpack, do not indicate wealth on campus as much, which lessens noticeable wealth gaps in students. However, Bowdoin seems to have much more variation in students’ material goods, which softens the line dividing people of different classes. In a students’ private high school, “you were in the wealthy zone, or you were very obviously out of it because students who weren’t part of that community would be without a MacBook and with an off-brand backpack. [At Bowdoin], there’s a lot more individuality in how people present themselves, so the signals get a little more distorted because even people who are super well off won’t always wear their best outfit or clothes. They wear raggy sweatshirts because they’re comfortable and it’s college, so nobody really cares that much.” From designer clothing to raggy sweatshirts, Bowdoin students’ style is not always a trustworthy indicator of wealth.
Situational factors play a great role in differentiating one’s relations with their peers due to Bowdoin’s composition of students and student’s newfound proximity to others. Extending on wealthier Bowdoin students’ variance in clothing, one student affirmed: “I just wear sweatpants and sweatshirts every single day, so I very much was not paying attention to what I was wearing or what other people were wearing.” It is common at Bowdoin for students to hide their wealth as such or simply not feel the need to dress up, especially as student-to-student interaction can always happen, a product of a residential campus. Another facet contributing to the situational differences in attending Bowdoin is how some students have switched from same-sex schools. As one student described their previous experience at a same-sex school, “I went to high school where we all had to wear a uniform. Everyone wore khakis and a polo shirt and then a pullover. There wasn’t really any way to differentiate yourself or flaunt anything. You saw it through athletics by seeing who had new cleats every single season versus a kid who’s been using the same cleats for the last three seasons in a row.” Therefore, although on one side of the token, situational factors might be allowing for casual dress, on the other hand, it can be some students’ shot at finally expressing themselves properly through fashion. This could also help lead to experimentation that conglomerates into Bowdoin’s stylistically diverse campus, as students selectively manage their outer appearances.