As often as sexism racism sexual oppression and gender oppression are rightfully decried in the pages of the commentary section, I feel as if a certain kind of oppression and consciousness is ignored fairly often. Often enough to warrant an inclusion that is particularly relevant as this crop of seniors prepares to graduate. This omission is class oppression and class consciousness. Like it or not, as Gusties, we are automatically of an immensely privileged class of people.

You might bristle at this—surely you have earned where you are through hard work. Right? Well, by purely looking at the global situation, you are privileged. You are in an elite portion of US society, a group that was able to attend a private liberal arts college with amazing professors. A minority of the U.S. population attends college. An even smaller minority attends private colleges. Think about how small the U.S. population is compared to the global population. You are privileged. God damnit, if you live in campus apartments, you have people coming to clean your room for you.

Also, confronting the issue of class calls into questions many longstanding myths about U.S. society, something I like to call the “bootstrap” mentality. This myth holds that most people got where they are by “picking themselves up” by their bootstraps, by working hard and working their way up. This may be true for some, even many, but for ever more people, class structures perpetuate themselves and are fairly stagnant. Americans mostly end up with the same class background as their parents. Statistics mostly deflate the illusion of “bootstraps” in American culture. Our status as college students means that issues of class are rarely truly discussed, because discussing it means confronting our own origins, our own successes and our identity as successful people.

While a large portion of Americans consider themselves middle class, this denies the reality of income distribution. Think hard about your background. Do you really think you would have come to Gustavus and been able to sustain this lifestyle without a solid base of support from your parents? I am going to admit here that I would not have without their support. While I have loans and debt to pay off, I would not have been able to go here at all if it hadn’t been for the stable class background of my parents. I suspect this is the case for a large portion of Gustavus students. Unless you actually did, don’t fool yourself into thinking you “earned” every aspect of attending here. Even if you worked hard through high school and got good enough grades to attend this school, in some way, your background still played a role in your attendance of Gustavus.

Adhering to the bootstraps mentality brings in an entitlement fallacy that can plague a person throughout life. I feel like we can lose touch with the world at large and lose our empathy with others. It is easy to forget that the whole world is not like yours. This can be heightened with the bootstraps mentality. If we “earned” our position here, that means that those who are not here did not earn it and are not as privileged as we are by choice and decision.

As we enter into the world at large as graduating seniors, we can’t lose touch with our position of privilege. An awareness of our position in life can do something for our empathy for others and allow us some humility that I think we can lose here at Gustavus, surrounded by people of a similar background. We aren’t all that special. We were in the right place at the right time and didn’t drop the ball. If you legitimately had to work immensely hard to come here, I applaud you and would like to say that you are fulfilling what I previously claimed as a myth. But if you are like me, which a large portion of you are, don’t delude yourself and don’t allow it to plague your life by thinking you earned it.

Be aware of your privilege and carry this knowledge through life. I see this attitude permeating Gustavus often and think that seniors should perhaps reexamine it lest they graduate and start voting Republican or libertarian or something. I mean, it was a LIBERAL arts education. Weren’t we properly indoctrinated?