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CONRAD JACOBER
Kenyon’s Ingrained Socioeconomic Hierarchy THE PERPETUATION OF SOCIOECONOMIC INEQUALITY AT KENYON AND THE ACCESSIBLE ALTERNATIVES The idea that we live in a meritocratic society, that one’s position in the social order is determined by one’s merit, is a pervasive myth; it fits perfectly with the “bootstrap” ideology that characterizes our individualized and antagonistic society. The facts, however, are to the contrary: the vast majority of the U.S. and world population dies in the same socioeconomic class to which they were born. Rather than focusing on the deep political and economic structures of our world society that must be destroyed and overturned to achieve a society that truly actualizes the tenets of freedom, reason, love, and justice, I want to focus on Kenyon policies that preserve socioeconomic inequalities and injustices. To begin, it must be noted that it is terribly problematic that there exists no affirmative action based on socioeconomic class, despite it being easily shown that the higher one’s class, the greater one’s access to supreme educational, monetary, experiential and social assets that cannon-fire any individual into higher education. Some do break past the iron chains of their lower socioeconomic class, but this occurs far less often than our direct surroundings and ideological training would inform us it does. Everyone knows a rags to riches story; statistics show their rarity. Despite all of this, there is nothing in higher education admissions to compensate for the lower class’
unequal access to necessary educational and social assets. What exists in admissions is rather the opposite: there is affirmative action for the wealthiest students contrasted with intense competition for the poorest. This is not unique to Kenyon; any school with finances that are less than certain into the next decade must admit students who pay full tuition to ensure its financial stability. This means that Kenyon and schools like it have much less competitive admissions standards for wealthier students who can pay the full tuition and much more competitive admissions standards for students beholden to a financial aid package. In effect, we have affirmative action for the wealthy against the poor, despite that any understanding would call for the exact opposite. Our “need awareness” ought to favor those who have been given fewer chances to succeed in life by their very birth, but it serves rather to ensure that the college is not burdened by the financial aid necessities of too many poor and lower-middle class students. It must be said that this is not the fault of Kenyon college, but of a society that is characterized by the dictates of profit and structures of socioeconomic inequality. If the ends of higher education were of greater importance than those of the economic demands of profit, this dilemma would be non-existent. Instead,
“Sheer ability, spelled i-n-h-e-r-i-t-a-n-c-e” Malcolm Forbes