The Limits of Representation

If you’re a person of color, you’re probably familiar with the classic “diversity shot” (and you’ve very likely been in one). It’s the photo on a brochure or a website homepage that features people of various races and ethnicities, smiling and embracing one another. Universities, companies, and other organizations love featuring these photos on their publications. They intend to communicate that hey, we are diverse! If you want to interact with different types of people, come here! If you are white, you will get to inhabit the same space as exotic people, like a human zoo! If you are not white, you will be happy here, just like these smiling people!

No harm, no foul, right?

Harvard Debate Culture

Freshman fall marked my first encounter with the study of economics. I barely understood anything from the textbook I occasionally read and the problem sets I passed only by the grace of God. The authority with which my classmates spoke convinced me that the population of idiot island was one: me. I wondered: Had everyone taken microeconomics before? Or was their command of entirely new academic territory a signal of my accidental admission here?

R.I.P. to the Mrs.

I’m a graduate of an all-girls’ prep school. Our rigorous academic high school curriculum intended to prepare us, women, to lead the future of society. Among coursework that included calculus and principles of physics, I remember life advice most — those heart-to-heart moments when teachers shared what we really needed to know.

As in any good Catholic institution, instructors prepped for us for the heterosexual (and, in our case, upper-middle-class) life cycle. Accordingly, a statistics teacher informed us that numerically, STEM fields offered the best prospects for finding a husband. A drama teacher warned us that a woman should never marry a man prettier than her. Our school’s strict principal allowed us to write in our yearbooks that our dream futures involved marrying a lacrosse playing all boys’ prep school graduate and raising two children in the suburbs.

Harvard’s Kindness Problem

How would you describe Harvard students? Those aspiring to join our ranks might call us smart, the best and the brightest. We might like to think of ourselves as ambitious and hardworking. After three years on this campus, I Iament the reality unbeknownst to or ignored by both parties: Harvard students are exceptionally rude.

Occupational Inquiry Testing

Quickly into my Harvard career, I learned that Harvard students do things differently. Here, handshakes are not reserved for business deals; they’re the customary greeting upon meeting another 18-year-old college kid. Across campus, you’re just as likely to find kids passing blunts as business cards. After meeting someone, you can expect a request to connect on LinkedIn in place of a follow-up text. Think you’d never get asked about your SAT or Advanced Placement scores after completing the college application process? That’s a cute aspiration.

At worst, I find these modes of communication mildly irritating, mostly off-putting. At best, I appreciate the explicit signal warning me that I should never be friends with their proponents. As a senior, I’ve become accustomed to the student body-wide obsession with social climbing and status as reflected in everyday conduct. But one common question has unwaveringly irked me: What do your parents do?