Prianka Misra Columnist
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Prianka Misra is a sophomore from Castro Valley, Calif. She can be reached at pmisra@princeton.edu.
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Friendships at Princeton
n a frigid Thursday night, I donned my gloves and buried myself in a thickly knit scarf and began my trek up campus to Witherspoon Hall. I was coming down with the flu, but I went anyway. I could practically hear my upperclassman friends chuckling, “Oh, freshman,” as I shivered and power-walked toward my reward for a week of 4 a.m. bedtimes: passes to Cloister’s Two Articles Night. As much as I, a California native, had trouble fathoming why my boots were crunching through the snowy debris in the middle of February ( just a few hours earlier I had a high fever!), I loved it. I knew that my friendships were bolstered by more than colored squares of paper, but I still felt fortunate to have connections with others that enabled me to enjoy these theme nights. This was — in part, of course — what college was about. I had joined several South Asian organizations — the South Asian Students Association, Princeton South Asian Theatrics, Naacho, Princeton Bhangra — that led others to jokingly nickname me “the brown queen.” I wore the crown gladly. These groups didn’t exist to me before, so I chose to become as involved as I could. At my high school, I was just the “brown one”: the single token Indian in my grade, at a place that touted its diversity as an integral part of its motto. At Princeton, I met other people who knew about Shahrukh Khan — every ’90s kid’s favorite Bollywood actor — and the real way to enjoy a samosa (no, not the Girl Scout cookie, and yes, soaked in chutney). I was absolutely thrilled, until I arrived back at my room that night with the passes I had obtained. As I handed one to my friend, she nonchalantly said to me, “I wish I could be ethnic like you so I could get passes to eating clubs.” She wasn’t joking. When I asked her what she meant, she continued, “I just feel like you have so many brown connections that can get you into places. It’s not fair. I wish there were a White Student Association.” With these statements, she made me question all of my South Asian friends at Princeton. I understood her hunger for passes — it’s no secret that passes serve as an epicenter of freshman nightlife at Princeton. But her final comment unleashed a slew of questions in my mind. Did I only have close friends or feel a sense of community on campus because I was Indian? Were all of my connections solely based on the commonality of our ethnicity, not on similar values or personalities? I remembered an excerpt from a book I had read for my freshman seminar: In his collection of essays called “White,” Richard Dyer talks about white people’s perceived lack of shared identity and cultural belonging. I thought about what it was like to be on the other side of this situation. Was it harder to fit in and find a niche as a white student at Princeton? Admittedly, I was angry and bitter about my friend’s comment. I reflected on the reason why I was in these student groups and why they existed in the first place. They were designed to allow students like me — who didn’t necessarily have groups to express their identity, whose names were always accompanied by a pause in roll call, who had to explain in kindergarten that they were not the Native American Indian but the “other” type — to finally belong. The undeniable sense of shared identity in these groups let me know that I was not alone in my experiences and that they add a richness and depth to my story that I should appreciate rather than scorn. But if you — yes, literally any of you, regardless of race, culture or ethnicity — wanted to join our groups and learn about our traditions, you could. Given the number of student organizations we have here that aren’t based on race or cultural identity, I am certain that you do not have to be “ethnic” to find your place here. I don’t just have friends because I am “brown.” I have friends because I have interests: being a cultural leader, volunteering, dancing, acting. Every member of these cultural clubs and organizations has different hobbies and interests. You don’t have to be “ethnic” to fit in with us because we don’t label ourselves that way. Before “Indian,” we are athletes, artists, scholars and more. Getting over the automatic assumption that you don’t belong in certain cultural groups is not a simple feat, but from what I have seen, we appreciate non-South Asian members to an even greater extent for their interest in exploring our movies, music, food and lives. Although I can’t speak from their perspective, non-South Asian members seem to enjoy being in these organizations as well, immersing themselves in new traditions and historical fabrics. We all can learn something from those who already understand that, when it comes to Princeton’s student groups, cultural barriers are simply imagined.
Opinion
The Freshman Issue summer 2013
Vicky Quevedo
Dishabituation
guest columnist
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hen you are surrounded by the same thing your entire life, you remain unaware of it until you are dishabituated; until you are removed from that environment of sameness and forced to see the differences of those around you. That thing that makes you the same doesn’t define you because there is nothing special about it. When everyone is Latino, no one is. I did not realize that my culture was significantly different than anyone else’s because I was (relatively) unaware of culture. I knew what it was — had heard of it before — but did not understand it. When I was in grade school, my peers were not minority students; we were all just students. I didn’t eat Latino food or dance Latino dances; I just ate and danced. I had nothing to contrast these parts of my culture with; I lived in a state of blissful ignorance. Then, somewhere between the first time I had to check a box on my college application that labeled me Latino/Hispanic, non-white and now, I became fully aware of the way that ethnicity is used to modify the aforementioned nouns — food, dances and people — outside of the primarily Latino neighborhood from which I came to Princeton. In my new world, it seems that everyone can be associated with one culture or another, more specifically, the majority culture and any number of minority cultures. Based on my experiences at Princeton, it feels as though people who are categorized along these lines of separation do not mix, and any effort to mix comes from the person of the minority culture. Life at Princeton has changed the way that I view the world and at times how I view myself. You see, I adopted the label Latina because it made me comfortable to explore a place 3,000 miles from home with a group of people that was somehow connected to me by that label. I willingly took it on and even embraced it. I became more Latina. In my first year, I became the vice president of Accion Latina and the co-coordinator of Latinos Unidos for Networking and Advising. When Danza Kuduro by Don Omar y Lucenzo came on in the Black Box theater, my non-Latino, minority (because let’s face it, you rarely see white people
in the Black Box) friends would look over at me as if that were my song. And I loved it. I love being Latina. I love rolling my “r”s. I love dancing Merengue, Cumbia and Bachata. I wouldn’t trade the traditions that I share with my family and many other Latinos for anything in the world. But before Princeton, being Latina was not my defining characteristic, and it definitely was not an identity that I consciously recognized.
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In my search for assimilation and integration, I found that this idea that we can all become part of one big society with a shared set of beliefs is unattainable and undesirable. :::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::: Now, when I am standing in line at El Tapatio, the local supermarket back home, I look around at all the brown faces and I feel jealous; I envy their unawareness. I envy the way that they, the people in my ethnic enclave in southern Los Angeles, live their lives, never truly thinking about their Latino-ness. I envy that they are still able to measure their self-worth by their character, their perseverance in the face of obstacles and their work ethic. I envy that none of these qualities fluctuate because of their differences in culture in the way I feel that mine do. I wish that I were still unaware that I have a Spanish accent, that Latino music is not played at every party and that somehow I am different. Most of all, I wish that my “different” didn’t feel inferior outside of my brown community back home. The realization that the world that I will be working in when I leave undergrad will be more like Princeton than like the community that I grew up in terrifies me; in this world, I will feel Latina first and everything else second. This year, in an effort to explore the majority community that is culturally foreign to me,
I began distancing myself from the Latino community that I have always felt comfortable in. I joined a sorority only to realize that I had to work harder to feel as though I fit in, and this was not only because of an arbitrary label, Latina, that automatically made me different but also because I do not share the same culture as the majority of the girls who make up this sisterhood. In my search for assimilation and integration, I found that this idea that we can all become part of one big society with a shared set of beliefs is unattainable and undesirable. I realized that the reason ethnically segregated groups exist at Princeton is not because minority people only feel comfortable with other minority people, but rather because it feels forced to be part of someone else’s culture. It feels forced to be part of organizations that have always been primarily nonminority, that continue to cater to the majority culture. I am torn between two worlds; in my dad’s words, “[I] come from a neighborhood where the minority is the majority”; I am a proud Latina, and while I love my culture, I am not only Latina. When I am outside of my primarily brown enclave, I really become part of the minority, and as of now, it feels as though there is no amalgamation between these two communities. I could never let go of my culture, but I will not continue being part of a community in which everyone shares the same culture after Princeton. I wonder what this new community, a community with a growing number of members of different cultures, will do to make room for the culture of those of us for whom assimilation and integration has been less than successful. How will our cultures mix so that one does not dominate the other? How will the tables turn so that it is not always the person from the minority who is seeking acceptance into the majority’s culture but those in the majority culture who will seek to understand, partake in, adopt and appreciate traditions of our cultures, which we are more than willing to share? I encourage others to share their story to create a dialogue that will begin to change how we think about culture, race, ethnicity and nationality because while this is my story, this is also the story of countless others.
vol. cxxxvii
Luc Cohen ’14
editor-in-chief
Grace Riccardi ’14
business manager
managing editor Emily Tseng ’14 news editors Patience Haggin ’14 Anastasya Lloyd-Damnjanovic ’14 opinion editor Sarah Schwartz ’15 sports editor Stephen Wood ’15 street editor Abigail Williams ’14 photography editors Monica Chon ’15 Merrill Fabry ’14 copy editors Andrea Beale ’14 Erica Sollazzo ’14 design editor Helen Yao ’15 multimedia editor Christine Wang ’14 prox editor Daniel Santoro ’14 intersections editor Amy Garland ’14 associate news editor Catherine Ku ’14 associate news editor for enterprise Marcelo Rochabrun ’15 associate opinion editors Chelsea Jones ’15 Rebecca Kreutter ‘15 associate sports editors Damir Golac ‘15 Victoria Majchrzak ’15 associate street editors Urvija Banerji ’15 Catherine Bauman ’15 associate photography editors Conor Dube ’15 Lilia Xie ’14 associate copy editors Dana Bernstein ’15 Jennifer Cho ’15 associate design editor Allison Metts ’15 associate multimedia editor Rishi Kaneriya ’16 editorial board chair Ethan Jamnik ’15
Vicky Quevedo is a psychology major from Downey, Calif. She can be reached at vquevedo@princeton.edu.
Student debt and the American decline David Will columnist
S
ince the late ’90s, America moved from the dot-com bubble to the housing bubble, and the market rose and crashed in spectacular fashion along the way. The student loan bubble is next. While Princeton shields its undergraduates from sinking into the red, national student loan debt surpassed credit card debt in 2012 to be the American people’s largest outstanding financial strain. This colossal burden looms not only over students’ heads, but over the economic recovery and future generations’ prosperity as well. Provisions that disadvantage younger, debt-ridden Americans should be modified to put millenials on equal footing with their fellow citizens. As a part of the bankruptcy process, debtors may typically shed financial burdens that they are unable to meet. But the law treats education loans differently based on the lender, and as a result only about 40 percent of student loans are currently dischargeable. However, back in February, Democratic congressmen Steve Cohen of Tennessee and Danny Davis of Illinois introduced a bill that would allow borrowers to drop all types of private
educational debt in bankruptcy. The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau estimates that private loans make up $150 billion of the $1 trillion total student debt in the US. The bill doles out no special treatment, nor does it create any new entitlements; rather, the act rectifies an inequity. Why should education loans be viewed differently from credit card debt, home or car loans? Student loan rates are set to double in June, leaving borrowers to face the specter of $5,000 in additional debt. Students won’t absorb the blow in a vacuum — this money is removed from the economy and people’s life savings. Representative Karen Bass, a Democrat from California, offers a comprehensive solution that Congress should, but has yet to, pass. The Student Loan Fairness Act limits federal interest rates at 3.4 percent, forgives a large portion of college debt accumulated by public servants and caps monthly payments to 10 percent of discretionary income. Additionally, the law forgives remaining debt for students who make every payment for 10 years. Critics of Congresswoman Bass’s bill cast the act as yet another government dispensation for a spoiled generation. But this is nothing more than fresh paint slapped on a trite claim: Past measures have overcome
generational condescension to later better the lives of millions. Proposed student loan alterations, like the benefits in the GI Bill, are predicated on demonstrated commitments from citizens, which differentiates the measures from entitlements, like social welfare programs. Each bill would rectify inequalities that students face before the law. That said, concerns still remain about depleting a contract’s symbolic value. Students, though young, are adults; in signing their names, they agree to certain conditions. But institutionalized hurdles deter students from making good on their obligations. Back in October, the CFPB issued a scathing critique of lenders’ behavior toward student borrowers that found parallels to impropriety in the housing market prior to the Great Recession. Borrowers seeking forbearance — which, in the context of mortgages, delays foreclosure — incur monthly charges. Ironically, this forces students to pay extra fees just to go through a process designed for those with depleted funds. Apart from sparse options to refinance, many students also reported that the legal language in their agreements was esoteric and difficult to navigate. The loan and repayment process must fundamentally change in order to restore students’ ability to hold true to their agreements.
According to new research by the Urban Institute, the income inequality that has plagued the country for decades has compounded into a generational wealth gap. Annie Lowrey of The New York Times writes, “The average net worth of someone 29 to 37 has fallen 21 percent since 1983; the average net worth of someone 56 to 64 has more than doubled.” With the average student facing about $26,000 in loans and the interest rate set to rise, millennials will be delayed for decades from saving. All told, the $1 trillion in outstanding student loan debt will accelerate the first American generational decline in wealth in modern history. Student loans are a clear and present danger — any system that contributes to the take-down of the world’s largest economy is due for radical change. None of the proposed measures carve out special exceptions that could be abused by irresponsible parties in the future. Rather, the bills before Congress both correct past injustices and guard against future crises by making the law more transparent and fair. As Princetonians, we are future leaders who must anticipate and diffuse this coming, if not already present, crisis. David Will is a religion major from Chevy Chase, Md. He can be reached at dwill@princeton.edu.