Veritas
It is common knowledge in America that you British have class hang-ups. From Elizabeth Bennett to Eliza Doolittle, ?ow you speak, where you live, and your parents? lineage constitutes the greater part of your social standing. And judging from the remarks of your own higher education minister, Oxford still has a weighty preference for scraping students from the upper crust.
Harvard too has suffered its history of aristocracy, but after many years, students? names reflect the diversity of our country rather than the diversity of campus buildings.
But beneath the veneer of equality at Harvard, and I suspect Oxford as well, there lies a more insidious social inequity, weakened from the old days, but a class system nonetheless. Every once in awhile the bitterness seeps through: a joke with a little too much bite, a look that betrays contempt, an incident of grand larceny.
You can tell a lot about a community from its crimes?the causes that incite deviance reflect the flaws and frictions that may run invisibly along the seams. What passions fester in the darker recesses of the heart, and what unleashes them?
Oxford has a purchasing officer who spent 30,000 pounds to support her "extravagant lifestyle" to buy a luxurious wardrobe. Harvard had two seniors last year who stole $100,000 to fund their version of the highlife?parties, entertainment and drugs.
Yet the reaction on our two campuses has been remarkably different. Your embezzlement scandal was quietly and efficiently resolved, with little fanfare in the OxStu. Our scandal lasted months, with every last sordid detail paraded in local and national news media.
One could point to scores of factors to explain the divergent reactions to these rather similar situations. Our scandal involved students while yours involved a school officer. Twice as much money was stolen at Harvard than from Oxford.
But the heart of the difference lies in how we treat the social inequities on our campuses. Your class differences are accepted and discussed in public. Ours are hidden; indeed, they are taboo. What made the Suzanne Pomey and Randy Gomes case so scandalous was that it underscored the social differences between the haves and have-nots usually invisible in our university. Gomes and Pomey, two students from lower middle-class backgrounds stole large amounts of money to fit in with the rich crowd?to fund all the trappings of the decadent lifestyle available to the few, the upper crustiest among us.
At Oxford, politicians and the media blast class differences constantly. At Harvard, we bury them. The big news stories deal with the $4500 tuition fees--embezzlements by the middle class are just not as interesting. Who said the British are more repressed?
6th Feb 2003