Wonder What Princeton Thinks About OWS? (Or, "Ask a Freshman" with The Washington Post)
Other than the occasional high-profile arrest of a professor, Princeton hasn't seemed all that gripped by the "Occupy" movements. In Cambridge, Harvard has restricted access to the Yard over "security concerns" raised by Occupy Harvard; so far no tent cities have sprung up in front of Nassau Hall. There isn't much immediacy to the movement here on campus in central New Jersey; it's something that's happening out there, somewhere else.Well, that changed for a little while on Friday night, as the "Occupy the Highway" march came through our secluded glen, Washington Post reporter in tow, on their way down to D.C. They were met by erudite, thoughtful students who shared their divergent views on economic theory and philosophy with the protestors.Just kidding.
The conflagration began after Princeton student Whitney Blodgett started to yell at the marchers as they passed by the bar. “We’re the 1 percent!” Blodgett yelled at them, laughing and making a thumbs up sign. “Get a job!” his friends yelled in chorus.
Alcohol. Freshmen. Pseudonyms. (The reporter was initially given the name "Whetney Brockton.") Light jeering. Yup, those are all the elements I would want present for the lead anecdote about Princeton students' views on the Occupy movement. Fortunately, the Post was able to get a different student viewpoint, too. What did this other student, incidentally also a freshman and, according to the Post, the only person to show up in support of the march, have to say about the general sentiment on campus?
"That's what happens when you come to a campus of ibankers," the student, who did not give her name, said. "Princeton students are benefitting from this system, so why would they protest?"
In the comments section of the blog post, one commenter mentioned that Blodgett reminded him of the preppy Harvard douchebag in Good Will Hunting. It's my favorite scene in the movie -- a rich, pretentious, ponytailed jerk trying to intellectually bully Ben Affleck, a southie kid who doesn't belong in his Harvard bar, only to get his ass handed to him by Matt Damon and the fine Boston Public Library system. After Matt Damon proves conclusively that he's smarter than this first year grad student, the only thing the blonde asshole can fall back on in his sorry self-defense is that he's going to get a Harvard degree and make boatloads of money while Damon will be "serving my kids fries at a drive through on our way to a skiing trip." (Damon gets the girl, by the way -- how do you like them apples?)The point is, Princeton students deserve better than to be represented by a caricature. It's not the Post writer's fault, of course -- she was just reporting what she saw, which happened to be a near-perfect encapsulation of so many of the negative stereotypes levied against Princeton. What's more, the tensions in the story gesture towards some real truths about Princeton. We aren't a particularly politically active group of kids; the campus political bent is perhaps more conservative than our peers; a lot of us go into finance; and there hasn't been the sort of public support for the Occupy movement that other schools have seen.But those issues aren't the reason why I cringe when I read the blog post. It's how much "Brockton" resembles that Harvard kid, in all his smug superiority:
“The fact is, America is a society that values skill,” said Blodgett, after calming down. “If I was in their position and didn’t have a skill or job, I guess I’d do the same thing.”
Like his fictional Harvard counterpart, our impromptu spokesperson seems fluent in projecting his rosy future: the job he'll have, the skills he'll acquire, and the money he'll make. But what makes our preppy douchebags different is that they don't even pretend to be smarter than the people they disagree with; they just jump straight to the condescending entitlement. And it's only one kid, or maybe a couple, if you count the chorus of "Get a job!"s being lobbed alongside his opinions. But when no one else seems to have much to say, it's hard to ignore the yelling.