Sex and the College, episode 2

Sex and the College is a column that explores love, sex, relationships and social life at Reed. This column is mostly based on personal experiences and observations around campus. If you have questions, thoughts or advice for others; send it to the Quest and I can add it to the column. 

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Reed is made up of a lot of extremely rich kids, and if you spend long enough talking to people about their break plans, their notions of fun, and (this is always the dead giveaway) what kind of school they went to before Reed, you will realize that there are people who actually pay full tuition to be here. As someone who covers their own tuition through multiple jobs, this comes as a major surprise. But the difference between Reedies who pay for their tuition and the trust fund kids goes deeper than where the money for our tuition comes from. It manifests itself in a deep disconnect. 

It comes up when you are having a normal conversation with another person and you get that deep gut-wrenching feeling that makes you think: Damn, you really don’t get it, do you?

Thinking about the layers of experiences and the dollar bills that separate Reedies from each other, I couldn’t help but wonder, has capitalism peeked its ugly head into our relationships? And when does the gap between our families’ income turn into a gap between our relationships? 

I was having a conversation with an old semi-romantic, semi-platonic, semi-situationship a few weeks ago. The conversation was about jobs, and I immediately knew that this was not the person that I should be talking to about it. A discussion about the number of jobs that we have came up and they changed the conversation immediately. Sure, I could have taken it as a harmless side-step, but something felt very wrong about the whole thing. The issue with socio-economic backgrounds in a school like Reed is that oftentimes, the trust fund kids don’t really get it. It is true that most college students are broke. We may both squirm while looking at the prices at a trendy coffee shop in the city, but there is a difference between those who know that they have the financial backing of their parents and those who don’t. The permanent state of broke-ness in college does not mean that the playing field is leveled. 

I ended things with that person the next day. 

If the class divide has such an impact on our close relationships, and if the rich (even the liberal-arts educated ones) are disconnected from us, is there really any hope for the world at large? It often feels like no matter how much they may know the academic truth behind these divisions, they still don’t understand. It doesn’t matter how many long conversations you have with people or how close you are; capitalism will always peek its ugly head into our relationships.