Harvard & Georgetown 1st generation students

[SSHoya]

www.insidehighered.com/news/2021/01/19/author-discusses-her-new-book-first-generation-students-harvard-and-georgetown

[DFW HOYA]

Another view from Harvard:

"I will name a university because I'm going to praise it, a university that gets this right. I'm going to choose Georgetown University. They have, for some of their students who come from modest backgrounds... They may be the first generation in their family to attend any college, no less a terrific place like Georgetown, they may be from very low income, they may be from a very rural area, whatever it is, maybe a student of color who feels like they haven't had some opportunity, something like that. Anyway, Georgetown makes an effort, and the result is that they succeed big time...At Georgetown, the overall graduation rate for all students is about 92%. That's really great. Do you know what it is for the first generation low income students where every place else sits way lower? It's 97%, and that's because Georgetown makes an effort."

www.gse.harvard.edu/news/22/03/harvard-edcast-what-it-takes-be-great-university

[RusskyHoya]

One of the things I've long really admired about the Georgetown Scholarship Program is the genuine care that Missy demonstrates toward every student. It's real, it's not an act. And the loyalty and admiration that so many GSPers have shown to her and the program - and the larger University too - is a testament to that.

For an example of how that can be mishandled, we can look to the minor brouhaha over the attempted moving of the GSP office, which was later reversed. But that little dustup pales in comparison to something like this landing in The New Yorker:

Moore, who had been chosen to become a Rhodes Scholar two years earlier, had been surprised to see how her personal story was packaged for the media. Both her parents had recently died, and she was going through a severe depression, but, she told me, “Penn dragged me to every single news outlet that asked for an interview and sent a Penn communications person with me to make sure I said the right things. It was, like, ‘Oh, yay, Penn has a Black Rhodes Scholar with dead parents who grew up working class.’ ” (Penn says that Moore was never made to do an interview or told what to say.) With Moore’s permission, her story was put on fund-raising material sent to alumni, and Gutmann summarized Moore’s life story in a commencement address. “To be fair, I was using Penn, too—it gave me economic and social capital,” Moore said. “But one young Black lady with dead parents using a multibillion-dollar Ivy League institution feels entirely different than the institution using her.”

...


“When we allow stereotype to be our stand-in for disadvantaged groups, we are actually doing them a disservice,” he said. “That’s what scares me about this case. It’s, like, ‘You’re not giving us the right sob story of what it means to be poor.’ The university is so focussed on what box she checked, and not the conditions—her lack of access to the material, emotional, and social resources of a family—that made her identify with that box.” He went on, “Colleges are in such a rush to celebrate their ‘first Black,’ their ‘first First Gen’ for achievements, but do they actually care about the student? Or the propaganda campaign that they can put behind her story?”

The article itself is exceptionally long for this day and age, but it's a must-read for anyone who cares about this issue, in addition to being a really affecting - and painful - human interest story more generally. This one is gonna stay with me for a long, long time: www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/04/04/mackenzie-fierceton-rhodes-scholarship-university-of-pennsylvania

[hoyaguy]

Mar 30, 2022 23:44:41 GMT -5 RusskyHoya said:

One of the things I've long really admired about the Georgetown Scholarship Program is the genuine care that Missy demonstrates toward every student. It's real, it's not an act. And the loyalty and admiration that so many GSPers have shown to her and the program - and the larger University too - is a testament to that.

For an example of how that can be mishandled, we can look to the minor brouhaha over the attempted moving of the GSP office, which was later reversed. But that little dustup pales in comparison to something like this landing in The New Yorker:

Moore, who had been chosen to become a Rhodes Scholar two years earlier, had been surprised to see how her personal story was packaged for the media. Both her parents had recently died, and she was going through a severe depression, but, she told me, “Penn dragged me to every single news outlet that asked for an interview and sent a Penn communications person with me to make sure I said the right things. It was, like, ‘Oh, yay, Penn has a Black Rhodes Scholar with dead parents who grew up working class.’ ” (Penn says that Moore was never made to do an interview or told what to say.) With Moore’s permission, her story was put on fund-raising material sent to alumni, and Gutmann summarized Moore’s life story in a commencement address. “To be fair, I was using Penn, too—it gave me economic and social capital,” Moore said. “But one young Black lady with dead parents using a multibillion-dollar Ivy League institution feels entirely different than the institution using her.”

...


“When we allow stereotype to be our stand-in for disadvantaged groups, we are actually doing them a disservice,” he said. “That’s what scares me about this case. It’s, like, ‘You’re not giving us the right sob story of what it means to be poor.’ The university is so focussed on what box she checked, and not the conditions—her lack of access to the material, emotional, and social resources of a family—that made her identify with that box.” He went on, “Colleges are in such a rush to celebrate their ‘first Black,’ their ‘first First Gen’ for achievements, but do they actually care about the student? Or the propaganda campaign that they can put behind her story?”

The article itself is exceptionally long for this day and age, but it's a must-read for anyone who cares about this issue, in addition to being a really affecting - and painful - human interest story more generally. This one is gonna stay with me for a long, long time: www.newyorker.com/magazine/2022/04/04/mackenzie-fierceton-rhodes-scholarship-university-of-pennsylvania

I really should already be asleep but I couldn't walk away half way through this article. This is truly up there with the worst f-ing stuff on another level and such a culmination of screwed up things and concepts in the world. I have never felt sick to my stomach like this before because this never really happens to me but right now I wanna genuinely boot. And the article being so long is good because every detail is important and other sites I checked up on cut stuff out that warps the very messed up picture.