The Question of Privilege

The critics of the recent hunger strike are quick to decry the privilege of the strikers and their supporters. This privilege is represented in various ways, ranging from an absurdly inaccurate portrayal of the strikers as rich and spoiled to an important recognition of their position as students at an elite American university. I write to contest the argument that the privileges of the students and the University delegitimize the past and future actions of students at Columbia.

It is true that there is a very large population of highly privileged students at Columbia. According to College Board, roughly 40 percent of Columbia students come from families wealthy enough to forgo even an application for financial aid from the University. The majority of students are white Americans with comfortable middle-class backgrounds. Although one need not be white or middle-class to be privileged—nor should these categories automatically invalidate the voice of any student—it remains important to recognize their position as such. Furthermore, there is a significant portion of students that does not share the many privileges of its peers, and it is a mistake to assume that the strikers are over-privileged, wealthy, or spoiled.

Even so, the opponents of the strike are right to point out a certain privilege of the strikers: the privilege of studying at Columbia. This is a privilege shared both by those supporting and opposing the strike, regardless of previous social or economic experience. In this case, the students’ privilege gives them an authentic voice at the University as legitimate members of its community. Here it is the self-reflective critical investigation of an individual’s own experience and relationship to the power structures around her which become important in mediating privilege and action.

Alberto Tiburcio argued in a recent editorial (“The Privilege of Choosing to Starve,” Nov. 19) that the strikers should appreciate their good fortune of studying at a progressive university and leave extreme action to people suffering from “real” inequity. Such an argument seems to ignore the influence of Columbia as an elite university, which contributes to the representation and determination of the intellectual, political, and economic principles of our society. Columbia need not be a place of violent oppression or severe poverty for its curriculum, policies, and actions to be relevant to its immediate community and society at large. If the administration fails to act in a moral or responsible manner, the faculty and students must hold the administration accountable.

Is it not enough for a noose to be hung upon a professor’s door for the community to take action, or need we wait for the professor to be lynched?

Some students are upset because they feel that the strikers were exercising a “tyranny of the minority.” Such a conception of the strikers is simply unjust. While only a handful of students and one professor actually fasted, they represent a significant and unavoidable portion of the University community, not a negligible extremist minority. The strikers’ petition has garnered over 1,100 signatures. The elected student governing bodies of Columbia College, Barnard College, and the School of General Studies have all expressed their support of the strikers’ demands. Among the student organizations to express their solidarity with the hunger strike are the Columbia University College Democrats, the Student Organization of Latinos, the Muslim Students Association, the Progressive Jewish Alliance, and the Asian American Alliance Political Committee. Would the critics suggest that these are marginal voices?

Other students criticize the strike because it ostensively “hijacked the debate” on campus. First, let me remark that little debate existed on campus before the hunger strike brought the issues to the foreground of the community’s consciousness. In this way, at least the possibility of public discourse was created where none stood before. That this discourse proceed productively is the responsibility of both sides, as has been rightly pointed out. But the strikers have not co-opted this discourse, as evidenced by the variety of published opinion.

Further, if there is any organization on campus which has the power to act unilaterally without the consent of the majority, it is the administration. Here is a minority group which does, in fact, make countless decisions impacting the entire student community without any regard for student participation. Through the abuse of its power, the administration has failed to follow through with promises and commitments it has made to student groups in the past. Bureaucratic sluggishness seems to have been confused with the active deceit and failure of an obdurate administration.

I am disappointed that so much energy and outrage has been directed at the strike and the students fighting against institutional marginalization, instead of the incidents which inspired them. If anything, this is the most discouraging example of blind and misdirected privilege that I have witnessed since the hunger strike.

Are the means by which students have won adequate resources in the Office of Multicultural Affairs really more offensive than the slew of hate crimes over the past months and years? Perhaps the students who have felt “marginalized” during the hunger strike, because a few brave students finally forced the administration to follow through with promises it made long ago, will now recognize the experience of institutional marginalization which hitherto was obscured by their own privilege.

The author is a graduate of the Columbia College class of ’07