Many of the things that were discussed in the article resonated with me. At a time in my sophomore year where many students have already affirmed that they will go to study abroad and are confident about which semester they will spend away, I’ve noticed that often the people I’ve talked to haven’t planned beyond that. They have it down to which semester, but not to which program. Those who have an idea of where they want to study abroad do because the experience involves a specific program of academic enrichment for computer science or government or anthropology. I felt that I was looking around and somehow everyone had received a signal to announce study abroad plans that somehow I had missed, and I felt a bit embarrassed that I hadn’t made concrete plans this semester even though studying abroad is a condition of my minor and encouraged for Spanish majors. I thought that I of all my friends should’ve been the most prepared and felt stressed whenever it was brought up and I did not have a plan, especially if I didn’t know which semester I would be abroad and which friends I would be spending my time with Junior year, around which many conversations gravitated towards. Studying abroad is treated just as the article describes: a rite of passage. People just assume they’re going to do it and assume other people are going to do it and the only question is of when and when other people are applying. It reminds me a lot of applying for internships and the ideas about personal development that comes with that, which the article also mentioned.
So I think that the article’s depiction of Wesleyan holds true. I had a vague idea that Wesleyan was supposed to be a progressive university, but I didn’t really invest that much time in the college school search. I received a brochure for the school in the mail, my mother encouraged me to apply, I saw that the school fit my list of criteria and would be considered a ‘target’ given my strength as an applicant and I applied. I was rather apathetic with the process because of my experience during covid with my public school system closing for the duration and my inability to have the ‘high school experience’ I expected even as I prepared to move on. I say this to emphasize that I didn’t really internalize the rhetoric about Wesleyan, and also to compare my carelessness with the college process to applying to study abroad. I applied to college because it was the logical next step, I did not want to be ‘left behind’ in a gap year. I wanted to be surrounded by kids my own age again, and it felt like what most people did. I took for granted the privilege of going to university in our commercialized education system. I took that for granted even without looking at all the websites, going on all the tours, or watching the college reveal and vlog YouTube videos. I still internalized the belief that college would be my right.
Even so, I am often surprised by the rhetoric about Wesleyan being particularly liberal. I think people tend to be democrats, but I’ve come to tend to associate Wesleyan with privilege, and a lack of understanding of that privilege such that we act to the detriment of our own supposed ideals. This is ironic because I came to Wesleyan with quite a privileged viewpoint. I expected to get into this prestigious university as my target school, and I thought that I was a good applicant. My high school was ranked nationally, and I graduated with awards. I thought that I had subverted this perspective. Many students at my high school apply to and get into UPenn disproportionately in our 100 or so class of students each year. As a university in the city of Philadelphia, UPenn is required to enroll from the school district of Philadelphia. So it recruits predominantly from the most privileged school in the district. I didn’t apply to UPenn, I thought that the dynamic was immoral. I thought that it wouldn’t be an accomplishment anyway, practically everyone at my school applied and comparatively it felt like a 50-50 chance to get in. It felt like between which students from my school got in and which didn’t there was no difference, we were all in the same school and all disproportionately more likely to get in. It felt like they only wanted the prestige of my high school. I felt like I was morally superior and more socially aware. However, when it came time for me to choose, Trinity and Wesleyan gave me about the same financial aid. I chose Wesleyan because its application rate was lower.
This anecdote is technically unrelated to the article, but I wanted to write about this because my takeaway from the reading was how connected these institutions of privilege are. There was nuance in my decision; in some ways I was subverting norms. My perspective watching class over class of my high school competing to get into UPenn and other ivy league schools made me feel like college was just a game, and my indifference was a subversion. In some ways it was. However, the way I took college for granted was not. I had worked hard in high school academically, but I did not have to work hard to get into college. I allowed myself to coast by. When I got into college though, I was suddenly on the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum; most of my friends here weren’t on financial aid. I began to realize that in my high school I had been on the higher end; upper middle class compared to lower middle class. My friends from home who had less means had to pay more for state schools and pre professional programs and take out loans, going into the anxiety of debt. We were all mostly middle class, but I was receiving much more financial aid without having to take out loans. I realized what a privilege it was to be at Wesleyan, not because I had been enchanted by its academic merits or beautiful campus and architecture, but because I didn’t have this extra worry. I had lucked out with financial aid and a school with resources to provide had sponsored me. I began to reflect on the ways in which my parents had been saving for college since we had been born. My mother was always available and willing to help with schoolwork at home, and both she and my father were in fields that require strong writing skills. They were both college-educated, native English speakers.
I again highlight this because of the nuance. I am technically ‘underprivileged,’ economically in some respects, but in a different context I am more privileged. I acknowledged my positionality in some respects, and I thought it made me socially enlightened. But even so, I was arrogant. I had been told all my life that the majority of kids in my environment were liberal. I thought that I was an unequivocally moral person. But my intrinsic privilege made me realize that morality and overall environmental liberalism were irrelevant in the context of the complex social hierarchy. I may have escaped relatively indoctrinated by Wesleyan notions of liberalism and global citizenship, but I did in a complicated mess enabled by my own privilege. I actually have experience with the idea of global citizenship from my Spanish immersion program in elementary school, which emphasized it. I still remember snippets of rhetoric, like a song that we would sing “My mom told me that I should be / A global citizen / My mom told me that I should be / respectful with my life.” I think I have a different perspective on it than the students in the article. When I was learning about it I didn’t even know what the word citizen meant, so I did not really see it in the respect of us all being citizens of the world. It was framed to me in the context of intercultural competency, and I assumed it was some niche educational theorem. Ironically, even though I have grown up and now know what the individual words mean, I didn’t make the connection between “citizens of the world” and “global citizenship” before now. It’s funny, I even included it in my CLS application and was unsure whether or not they would understand what it meant in the context of my education. However, as I reflect, even though global citizenship was framed to me in the context of intercultural competence, it was still in some ways handled through a lens of American ethnocentrism. We were global citizens because we were engaging in the world, and the implication there was built on some level of us being privileged Americans and giving ourselves with respect to the rest of the world, even as we personally benefited from this language immersion experience.
This is editing Henry resubmitting this reflection again, but I just remembered a time that we sang “We are the world” by USA for Africa and it’s a really fascinating microcosm of this idea of global citizenship that the program tried to emphasize. “There comes a time when we heed a certain call, when the world must come together as one” it’s a nice sentiment, but in the context of the song which emphasizes people dying and suffering in Africa, though Africa is not mentioned in the song itself. The idea of heeding a call almost reminds me of the concept of the ‘white man’s burden.’ “We are the world, we are the children. We are the ones who make a brighter day so let’s start giving … it’s true we’ll make a better day just you and me.” Although these lines are about unity they emphasize us (Americans) being empowered to give all the amazing things that we have to offer, and that we will make a better day just you and me by virtue of good intentions. “Send them your heart so they’ll know that someone cares. And their lives will be stronger and free. As God has shown us by turning stone to bread. So we all must lend a helping hand.” The implication of this song is that ‘they’ will not know that people care about them unless we express our selfless love. The song is attributed to ‘USA for Africa,’ so it’s assumed that they’re talking about that. But the song is really just an echo chamber of idealism to feel good about. The implication with the line about God is that we are His chosen people, and we must bring the grace that He has shown us by “turning stone into bread” to this suffering continent, which is characterized by this single story in its entirety. “We all are a part of God’s great big family. And the truth, you know. Love is all we need.” These lines really encapsulate the idea behind problematic mission trips, that all someone needs is good intentions and that their desire to bring God’s love to a region that has not received it. “We are the ones who make a brighter day” focuses on the United States as bathed in global influence to bring light to the darkness of Africa. The song repeats that “we’re saving our own lives,” which again localizes this act of doing good for the benefit of the do-gooders. The USA for Africa raised a lot of money and through that did a lot of good with their privilege, but the song is still an example of power dynamics. Really, even as they repeat that through good intentions and simple love profound change can arise from “you and me,” what these celebrity singers contributed was possible because of their own status and the money and fame that they could add to the cause.
I imagine the administrators thought that it was a beautiful event, children as the American future singing about beautiful global idealism, but as a first grader I had no idea what I was saying and just singing what I had been told off of a paper that had been handed to me. My education in global citizenship still speaks to the wonderful opportunity that was language immersion, and I’m grateful for that. I was taught respect well enough; from native Spanish speakers who represented their own cultures in the material. However, it was not quite all that; the initiative was started by privileged educational theorists with lots of money who did not have the same awareness as the teachers. I agree with the students in the study that we’re all technically citizens of the world. Those who have the opportunity to travel often do so because they have sufficient financial stability, and Wesleyan is unique in that aid transfers abroad. The school had an ‘enrichment’ track, which was the immersion program, and an ‘enhanced’ track. The enhanced, non-Spanish speaking track was predominantly Black students, and there were many more white students in the enrichment track. Because of the networks of privileged and institutionalized racism in this country, white parents were more likely to pounce on the implications of this unique educational opportunity for their children. It was a brand-new school and so one had to be searching to learn about the initial opportunity. The lack of diversity was much more prominent when my sister applied; white parents were more likely to have higher economic privilege and therefore more free time to invest in searching for different schools. The school had a lottery system, but white privilege was still represented in the admissions process. As my older sister had attended, I had a better chance of getting in.
Of course, the program was still extremely diverse relative to the context of our country, so was Masterman High School. But Philadelphia has a large population of people identified as African American, and these environments in which I had been educated were disproportionately white. I gained all the accolades of being a white person benefiting from a diverse environment all my life, but still found myself internalizing privilege and racism. I am grateful for being able to experience diversity and how it has allowed me to grow into who I am today. However, language immersion was a wonderful opportunity because of what it offered me, because of the possibilities it opened up in my future. In that context it was very clear: language immersion was a benefit for the students, and our engagement in that context was for our own development. Often as white people we market diversity to each other in the same way, that it will enrich our children’s worldview. But what about the ‘diverse’ students? Nonwhite students become treated as the ‘other’ and are subliminally implied to be like programs for the educational development of white people. Our commercialization of the international experience starts in our own country, throughout the education system. I am grateful for the diversity in which I grew up, and some might not have that same environment and not be able to confront their privilege as easily.
However, what I’m trying to communicate is that even in the so-called liberal spaces there is white privilege. I love Wesleyan and I’ve come to be really passionate about the educational opportunities that I have the chance to engage in like GEM. I feel more excited about my future. I’ve met many friends that I truly love. But the danger in categorizing a space as intrinsically liberal is that it implies the absence of things like institutionalized racism and prejudice. And this is not true; institutionalized racism is everywhere in this country and different kinds of privilege permeate our interactions. I don’t mean to be negative about myself in this essay. I critique some of my hypocrisies, but my morality and political beliefs are not a reflection of my privilege. I have been told that I am conscientious and humble, but white privilege is not a personality trait. I don’t see myself as a good or bad person as a result. I really think this is reflected in the praxis model, that reckoning with positionality is a cycle. And in this next stage of the cycle, in the frame of study abroad, I wrote this reflection. It’s rather long and I’m not sure what I’m trying to achieve by doing so. I want to affirm that group membership does not exempt me from privilege and echo similar themes from the articles. I want to affirm that cycle, and reframe my anxiety about studying abroad. As I’m writing this, I actually have the “first steps” meeting in a couple of hours.
As I reflect on my education and the concept of diversity, I wonder what I brought to that table. As diversity is often presented in white spaces as a benefit to the white student’s worldview, to challenge that privilege. But what do we add to that equation as white students? Diversity cannot just be a trial run for white students to unlearn their internalized prejudices. In that respect, what would I add to a study abroad program? What does my presence in a study abroad program really even add to the space that I step into? I think I need to grapple with these questions with humility. I’m not sure how I could help at all. But I think that’s something to explore and center my preparations around. I know that privilege is a cycle; earlier in the semester I had felt overwhelmed by the possibilities of Spanish-speaking cultures that I could immerse myself in. But I didn’t have a meaningful reason beyond that allure to study abroad. I signed up for this meeting because I felt like I was behind my classmates, and study abroad began to feel like something I had to do, that everyone was so sure of and it wasn’t normal that I felt aimless. But I think that recognizing I was lacking a meaningful drive was healthy in this context. I’m now searching for a meaningful connection through study abroad where I might have something to offer. I was thinking maybe that exploring a program I heard about in Cuba might be a good place to start.
I would bring my privilege to that context, and I’ve acknowledged that it has characterized my life in multiple ways in this reflection. So I would draw on my perspective as a Global Engagement Minor in the acknowledgement of my positionality and the appropriate study and preparation that I value in the approach of studying abroad. Because of the historical tension between America and Cuba, maybe my position there could add something, maybe I could apply the principles I’ve learned about in school to offer a perspective that would make me a more conscientious American, but also in a way to offer a more respectful viewpoint as an American deeply tied to this history of conflict and aggressive international power. I have white privilege and that will not go away after changing my worldview however dramatically by studying abroad. At the same time, I think it’s even a bit egocentric for me as a white person to assume that interactions will be dominated by white privilege. In the educational setting and ‘diversity,’ students have free will and a multifaceted identity. Everyone can contribute a lot by being themselves, and race is important but still only one part of it, though can be magnified in context. I bring my privileged racial identity to interactions, but I also bring some other aspects of my identity that are not privileged in society. So I don’t really have a conclusion here, I was going to end it with that sentence about still having white privilege after study abroad but I had this thought right here and the end and wanted to resubmit. I guess I’ll end with this: I know that Wesleyan says things about how “Wesleyan students are ” and Wesleyan is _ because they market themselves and that is part of the ‘rules of the game’ with the college process. But I think that I’ve shown in this reflection that when people are told that they are the most globally conscious, the most civically engaged with the public good or however those messages are transmitted, that simply encourages more privilege and actually works counter to that core philosophy of inclusion and engagement. In the careless celebration of those qualities harm can be and is produced.
