I think I got it figured out. (Still grappling with narcissism and paternalism…so please pardon me, especially during this difficult finals period.)
First, it’s a happy accident that I’m here. It’s a happy accident that we’re all here, more or less. As accomplished as we are, in the back of our minds, we should know that there were so many variables in admissions that there was no absolute way that we are THE CHOSEN. From that understanding, I tried to remain extremely grateful as a student at the Macaulay Honors College.
But something’s been nagging me all this time. I can’t enjoy a two-hour meeting with my honors advisor — green tea and giggles, every time — on a regular basis when there’s a flood of students sitting outside of Advising Services waiting in line for a 15-minute consultation in the East Building at Hunter. The inequality of resources here is simply too great.
Some of what I have is at the expense of other students — and that’s a tough pill to swallow. But it’s true; Macaulay is funded through public and private sources. So, while I have so many organizations to thank for my fellowships, Opportunities Fund and programs as a Macaulay student, I have New York City to thank for my tuition (and my precious purple laptop).
Every Macaulay student has a choice to address the inequalities present on campus. By no means are we obligated to act on it (whatever that means), but we are obligated insofar as we are at the receiving end of a very tense and difficult dynamic at CUNY. Let’s not delude ourselves into ignoring the separation that exists within our university system. All of our benefits do not come from some magical Louis Vuitton clutch bag. Our school is built on a combination of public funding and private donations, and while I don’t even want to think about the implications of privatization at the moment, this tension exists and we engage with it on a daily basis. It is in the Mac Laptop that you’re using to read this article. It is in the secret hope we usually confirm, that doors on campus open for us because we’re Macaulay students.
But this is not the Ivory Tower. This isn’t even another run-of-the-mill school. Macaulay is specifically unique in the way that we are honors students at a public institution. By its very nature, our school places us in a tough position because we have when others don’t. I could assuage my guilt and say that it’s only a drop in the bucket. But it’s a drop that carries deep anxiety and discontent amongst students, staff, professors and administrators at school.
I often tell my friends that if they didn’t want to think about students outside of Macaulay, they should’ve gone elsewhere. Whether we want to accept it or not, Macaulay is not the place to separate ourselves and hold ourselves high based on status. The climate, the discussion and the tension of student debt and resource inequality would not exist in this form at Harvard, Columbia nor at SUNY Stony Brook because unlike them, our success is partly informed by resources taken from others. Granted, there are other honors scholarships on campus, other schools with honors programs, and other students who receive scholarships to go anywhere. But the success of non-Macaulay scholars at CUNY is a great reminder that we are privileged and not entirely on our merits alone.
That means, we aren’t just a group of high-achieving scholarship recipients, programmed to win prestigious fellowships, scholarships and post-graduate posts. Our identity should mean more than the distance we place between others and ourselves at CUNY.
Much of what is missing from CUNY is the fault of a long string of decisions that drained resources from students attending our university. From the “temporary” requirement of tuition to the ending of open admissions, CUNY has since recovered much of what it lost forty years ago by investing in certain populations and initiatives, including us.
What’s worse is that we aren’t helping our image at all. We’ve all done it; it’s no secret that we share a common identity crisis when we appear standoffish to the frustrated non-Macaulay scholar. It feels uncomfortable knowing we have much when others don’t. It feels uncomfortable when we introduce our school whenever we’re off campus. It’s just easier to talk to people who are in the same boat as we are. That’s the whole point of a community. But if you don’t feel anything for the student who needs to register one more class and they can’t because it’s closed, then you have mastered something that I’ve yet to fully grasp.
The political and educational administrations in power should be horrified at the crumbling infrastructure of the CUNY system. I wouldn’t be as bothered about priority registration if students had enough sections to take. I wouldn’t feel as badly about the Macaulay Advising Program if students outside of the Honors College could have the opportunity to consult advisors more frequently than once every six weeks. I wouldn’t worry all that much about my lion’s share of CUNY resources if my classmates didn’t need to fight for scraps of what’s left.
How does CUNY plan on accommodating post-secondary education in the next five, ten or twenty years? By raising tuition? How does New York plan on building an educated, informed population with a fantastic background in primary, secondary and post-secondary education if the system is on its last leg?
At this point, I might as well throw my hands up and continue to succeed unaffected within the system of inequality presented to me. I can try and put myself at ease knowing that the chips fell in my favor and that it isn’t my concern that others are suffering. I could try and rationalize my successful endeavors as door openers for other CUNY students. Hey, maybe one day, a student at Hunter would be able to attend the Clinton Global Initiative University as a participant or could receive a scholarship from the Point Foundation too, because I was here.
But I’m not Beyoncé. I’m just some narcissistic Macaulay diva from the Bronx. And it’s hitting me hard that my presence actually is not a presence that students at CUNY can find immediately useful. Am I here to make the school look better, or am I here to get an education?
The least we can do is learn about where our money comes from. We can do slightly better if we actively think about the image problem we may perpetuate when we actively choose not to interact with other CUNY students in class. The best we can do is pursue local, state and federal authorities to prioritize public education, so that we don’t feel as bad for having nice things. But once again, we don’t have to do anything.
However, it will never be as easy as taking our scholarship and doing whatever we want without considering the institution and other students within CUNY. Why? Because at one point or another, the structure of Macaulay reminded us of what we have and what others don’t. If we can appeal to the foundations of accessible education for all at CUNY and the benefits of our school, it would be a fine start to putting this anxiety at ease.
Either that, or a new therapist for Macaulay students — whichever is cheaper.
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Kwame Ocran was part of the four-person team that wrote and presented the paper “‘Deconstructing the Ivory Tower’: A Conversation About Macaulay Identity” at the National Collegiate Honors Council Conference in Boston last month. For more information on this discussion, the Macaulay General Assembly, or to read their research paper, click here.
Thanks for this, Kwame. I think this kind of questioning, challenging (soul-searching?) is what we need…from students, administration, staff, faculty, all of us! These are not simple questions, and don’t have simple solutions. But moving beyond anxiety to action is a worthwhile path to take.
As usual, brilliant work, Kwame!
You continue to inspire me. 😀
“Our identity should mean more than the distance we place between others and ourselves at CUNY.”
This line gives me the chills. Perfection.
I totally agree with this. Watching my fellow students get locked out of classes they have every right to take, watching people get screwed while we have access to any class we want makes me a witness to injustice. I don’t want to complain about the privileges Macaulay has given me, but it sickens me to see people literally denied an education by CUNY, and then run around for weeks trying to get a seat in a class, because the higher ups don’t know how to accommodate them.
So impressed. I will say that as ITFs we sometimes talk around the edges of a similar conversation; we are a very small group of relatively economically privileged doctoral students within a larger graduate student community, given graduate fellowships that have historically been some of the highest-paying at CUNY while many of our friends and colleagues scramble to pick up more teaching for less money. The ITF program has in the past few years become a haven for those of us who have (naturally) delayed entering an exceedingly weak post-doctoral job market, but as a result, we’ve made it more difficult for new people to enter the program, resulting in an acceptance rate for the fellowship that mirrors Macaulay’s undergraduate acceptance rate. I think we’re aware of how lucky we have been (both in obtaining a measure of economic security and in having opportunities to work and learn alongside all of you, which believe me, we all appreciate), but it is difficult to see our friends from the Graduate Center overcome many more hurdles for much less recompense.
There are a lot of reasons I get frustrated with Macaulay students who remove themselves from the broader CUNY community–but one thing I think about a lot is that those of us working with you also participate in that separation. I feel blessed to come hold my office hours at 67th Street each week, to work in a gorgeous building with wonderful people (P.S. folks please come make good use of my often-empty office hours!), but I taught in the far reaches of CUNY for too many years not to remember just how many more hurdles other undergraduates and other doctoral students must overcome.
One thing I would (gently) encourage Macaulay students to do is to do what they can to lift up their peers. Not in the Goldstein-endorsed “trickle down theory of education” manner, but just to be the sort of friend to people on your campus who comes into the classroom, the dorm, the student group meeting with empathy and awareness and compassion. Above all, create opportunities for your CUNY peers to speak out, in and out of class, and support them when they do. It’s kind of like the way a General Assembly uses stack to make sure that certain marginalized voices don’t get drowned out–we should always remember that when we talk about CUNY, the Macaulay community may be small, but it is well-represented. Let’s devote our energies to promoting those voices within the broader CUNY community who generally go unheard.
Do you feel guilty about being a Macaulay student? Maybe you should think about why you applied to Macaulay in the first place, and what you initially expected to get out of the program.
The reason Macaulay students are in Macaulay is because during our high school years, we worked like dogs to make sure that we would have a good GPA, a good SAT score, good application statements, etc. – while other students didn’t necessarily put in that kind of work. Now our hard work paid off. Generally speaking, it is NOT an “accident” that some people got into Macaulay, while others didn’t. Nothing in life is an “accident”; you get out of life what you put in. Yes, I am also extremely grateful for the opportunities that Macaulay has afforded me, but gratefulness need not be synonymous with guilt.
Keep in mind that there is a high price that we pay for the privilege of being Macaulay students: we are required to maintain a 3.5 GPA (not an easy task), we are required to do community service, we are required to do honors projects, etc., etc.
“We can do slightly better if we actively think about the image problem we may perpetuate when we actively choose not to interact with other CUNY students in class.”
Who is this “we”? With all due respect, you do not speak for all Macaulay students, so please do not use words like “we” when describing the behavior of Macaulay students vis-a-vis “other CUNY students.” Who said that Macaulay students “choose not to interact with other CUNY students in class”? How do you know this? How are you able to make this kind of conclusion? Have you done a survey of all Macaulay students and asked them about their in-class behavior vis-a-vis non-Macaulay students? Maybe we have our own cliques, but many groups in society are like that, no?