Ole Miss and Social Class

Aries and Seider conclude that lower income students who attend private elite colleges face more class related challenges than lower income students who attend state colleges. However, I have found through my own experiences that these difficulties still occur on a frequent level at specific state universities. There may not be as big of a gap in social and cultural capital between the classes at the state universities but the gap itself and powerlessness is still as noticeable, through my own eyes at least. Recently, some friends and I traveled down to Ole Miss University (Oxford, MS) to watch them play the number one ranked football team in the nation, LSU. We tailgated in The Grove which is known for having the best tailgating atmosphere in the country. Though the campus had signs hanging on their street lights emphasizing the teaching of cultural diversity in their classrooms it was clear that there was only one culture on that campus: Upper-Middle to Upper class white culture. This was evident not only by the fact that every male and female on the campus during game day dressed in “country club attire”  but I did not see a single minority in The Grove or on their campus for the entire 48 hour span which I stayed there. During my stay I did notice a group of Ole Miss students who were not dressed up in expensive brand clothing nor were they drinking the classier alcohol which most of the other students were consuming. Ironically, this group’s tailgate was located along the marginal outside boundary of the grove. The group consisted of all males dressed in t-shirts socializing by themselves. In Oxford, MS I also noticed during my stay that most working class job positions (in restaurants that is) were held by blacks. I am forced to wonder if these class-related challenges and difficulties discussed in the article are more dependent on the region of the country which the college is located in rather than the actual school. This would be an interesting fact to research throughout only colleges in the South where class is especially directly related to race and intersectionality as a whole.