First, we should at least recognize that these less-well-to-do students are not intellectually inferior but simply less mentally groomed. They certainly have the ability, considering they have overcome higher and sometimes seemingly insurmountable obstacles to achieve their education. The motivation is there. If it was not, they would not be here. Not even speaking about the diversity of opinions they might bring, they are untapped minds with much to give academically. We need to give them the means so they can give us the ends. I guess the idea would be that if someone has been competing in the academic race with a chain on his foot and was good enough to get close to what many legacies show as academic standards, and if you take that chain off of him, that person can most likely win that race, or get at least the close second. What we need to do is help loosen that chain and its vestiges. The long-term results will pay off, and in the U.S. News and World Report race, Amherst could win.
These students are the revolutionaries. They have the most reason to make change. Theirs is not the status quo. These are the movers and shakers. This is not to say that our students from elite backgrounds won't do great things or even be those who change society. But honestly, who has more reason to change the status quo, to make the headlines, make history? Who will be that conspicuous "rags-to-riches" story, such-and-such a person whose great expectations came true? Not the legacy, not the intellect who most likely came from the economic elite, and not the athlete (this isn't Div. I here, folks)-it most likely is going to be that low-income student. And do you know what school the paper will say he or she graduated from? That's right, Amherst College.
Do we really think that institutions like Harvard, Yale and Princeton Universities accept people based solely on their merits? No, they accept them based on who they're going to be one day, what they're going to do in the world. The Ivies accept students based on who their fathers are-meaning when such-and-such a student inherits his father's company, it will say "Harvard graduate" and people will say, "What can you expect, look where he went." Why else do you think George Bush was accepted into Yale? Whether he failed or passed his courses, he was going to be somebody. Either that, or the Ivies accept students based on who will likely be somebody in the future despite their beginnings, head of a Fortune 500 company or Nobel Prize winner. Who are those people? Those with ambition. Why are so many Nobel Prize winners and pioneers in science foreigners? Because those are the ones who wanted it the most and had the most sincere search for knowledge, the ones who wanted to do something.
Last, even if these students are not the Che Gueverras of tomorrow, they will be models to society; to use the term differently, they will be model minorities (in the sense that they will be the poor kid amongst the rich kids, the majority). Who are people-black, white, poor or rich, most likely to notice with the Amherst name? The average upper-middle class manager with the Amherst degree, or the upper-middle class manager with an Amherst degree who came from humble origins? By sheer fact of not being the status-quo, the latter will stick out and bring attention and admiration to the Amherst name.
Here's the real question: who brings prestige and reputation to the school? The answer lies in the someone who brings the name and the fame: the lower-income student. If we can make Amherst the place that welcomes these latent students-well, Harvard and Yale move over. The sacrifice now will more than pay itself off later.
Andre Perez can be contacted at
arperez@amherst.edu