Critical Mass

By Carl Forsberg

The most recent cause taken up by Yale’s campus activists demonstrates their refusal to think deeply before pulling out their placards, chants, and rhetoric. Recently, the urgent need to reform Yale’s financial aid system has galvanized our campus’ activist population. That financial aid system, widely recognized as one of the nation’s most generous, requires students receiving aid to earn up to $ 6,600 a year in self-help. Campus activists point out that this requires Yale students to get jobs (!) and that these jobs can require a lot of time. (A shocking concept if there ever was one).

To earn that sum during the school year, working at Yale’s $10.50 minimum wage, one would need to work twenty hours a week. Most students, however, would rather earn the $6,600 during the summer. If a Yale student were to make only $8 an hour, he would be able to earn $4,800 by working 15 forty hour weeks, leaving only $2,200 to be earned during the school year. In reality, though, most Yale students are able to earn a far higher wage during the summer. To earn the entire $6,600 in twelve weeks would require a wage of $14.50 per hour – not an unrealistic wage for a Yale student.

In the eyes of those agitating for financial aid reform, this burden is far too high. The necessity of finding a paying summer job rules out possibilities of working for certain nonprofit organizations, taking unpaid internships within the halls of power in D.C., or writing from a vacation home in Florida. And holding a job during the academic year is even worse. The time commitment a job requires, activists point out, will make financial aid students’ Yale experience “different from that of students not on financial aid.” [1] This is only to be expected, in the same way that varsity athletes doesn’t have the same Yale experience as a student who is trying to win a Rhodes scholarship. But activists are not just concerned because the financial aid policy gives students a different Yale experience – that would hardly be cause for protest. Instead, activists seem to assume that wage labor is simply unsuitable for Yale students.

For most of our nation’s history, all but the wealthiest Americans were expected to work and pay for most, if not all, of their college education. In many cases, those who spent their summers in hard manual labor went on to contribute much more to society than those who wandered through Europe on perpetual holiday. The benefits of learning to balance work and academics are at least as great, if not greater, than those of playing intramurals or publishing a magazine. While activists may argue that, “Yale must ensure no student has to live constantly worrying about money,” [2] the truth is that in the real world, resources are limited. Money is a resource worth worrying about, and sometimes those not blessed with great wealth from the get go must work for it instead.

While activists may preach their concern for the downtrodden, their most recent cause reveals that their appeals for justice exist alongside elitism. Students who attend Yale are among the nation’s most fortunate and talented individuals. Apparently, this entitles them to live a life unsullied by plebian concerns about bills or finances, free to philosophize on the metaphysical injustice of a system from which they gain enormous benefits.

Recently, the Yale Daily News published an opinion piece by several Yale students entitled “Religion prescribes a need for aid reform,” [3] in which they write: “Our demand that Yale reform its financial aid policy is based on universal principles of freedom equality and justice,” [4] citing the Bible and its call to love one’s neighbor as creating a religious and moral imperative to for reform.

While it’s a happy surprise to see Yale students talking respectfully about religion (an uncommon thing these days) the point in their piece is wrong. Christ himself was not above manual labor, spending years as a carpenter before beginning his ministry (although activists might point out how inherently unjust the Roman Empire was for allowing the Messiah to be shaving boards in Nazareth when he should have been studying under the brightest minds in the lyceums of Athens on a full scholarship). Most of the apostles were called into the ministry from common trades. Paul, possibly the keenest mind of the Roman world, took time off from his missionary journeys to work as tent maker in Corinth, time with which he could have written several more of his revolutionary epistles. It does not take a brilliant mind to grasp that Yale students are not the dregs of society to whom Jesus devoted his ministr. The Bible calls on the fortunate to make sacrifices and to bear their talents with an attitude of humble gratitude and service; Yale students often seem far too self-impressed for that.

This gross misuse of scripture is symptomatic of a widespread, generally unchallenged tendency to thoughtlessly inappropriate morality (most of which, however, uses scripture not at all). Religion ought to involve the constraint of personal desire to the will of a sovereign Master. The language of the recent Yale Daily News opinion piece may have been appropriate in protesting conditions in the Sudan or Cuba – situations in which people of faith should feel an obligation to act. But uncritically applying the moral imperatives of scripture to every social cause reduces morality to a tool useful in obtaining political ends. The gospels should not be a series of cookie-cutter catch phrases used to chastise that which we don’t like. To hold morality sacred demands deep thought and a thorough consideration of the issues before moral pronouncements are made. Morality is under attack from too many as it is. It would be nice if we who still cherish it would occasionally stop and ponder its application before turning it into a comic farce.

But if equality of experience is really important, let me suggest an alternate means of reforming financial aid: All Yale students, even those not on financial aid, must contribute $6,600 out of their own pockets – so everyone works. Would this stop the activists’ protests? Probably not. But it might give them something to think about.

Editor’s Note: We have experienced first hand how annoying these protests can be, as they were conducted right outside our ear-training class. Having attempted to take musical dictation from a piano while hordes of busy-bodies stand outside banging drums and shouting slogans, we have not been won over to the financial-aid-reform cause.      -Gelernter

[1] Coster, Medina, and Williams. “Religion prescribes a need for aid reform” Yale Daily News 22 February, 2006: 2.

[2] ibid

[3] ibid

[4] ibid