hmmmm

While reading this interesting story about Michelle Obama and her experience at Princeton, I was particularly struck by this piece:

Since graduating, Obama has not returned to the Princeton campus. But after leaving the college behind, she found a way to resolve her dilemma while remaining true to herself. [my emphasis, of course]

And the clueless question asked of me by another Latina who attended an ivy a few years after me: "You didn't have fun at Princeton?" You will have to imagine the incredulity in the voice. I won't further characterize the voice because I need to follow Thumper's father's advice.

But, I can tell you how I felt.

I wish that Princeton had been more inviting socially. I wish that I could have walked through the experience feeling welcomed, integrated and accepted. I was card-carrying involved. I didn't hide in the shadows or dive inside a book and re-emerge at graduation.

But, I never felt welcomed or accepted.

This despite the fact that I was on a first name basis with much of the university administration. I was not left out despite the institution's tradition of locking out anyone who did not make an effort to fit in. I won't cop to that. Either I didn't know how to fit in or just didn't care to.

I understand that personal situations colored those first days. It was a whirlwind of being 3000 miles from home (yes, by choice), in a state I didn't know anything about (blissful ignorance or just the way Californians deal with the fact that it's a big country out there), in a climate (weather-wise) that I had never really experienced. It was a difficult transition. You could call my mental state out of sorts on all those levels, not even taking into account that my mother hadn't spoken to me for a week before I left, or that my parents chose not to even accompany me to the airport let alone drop me off at college. [My mother still swears that she was not speaking to me for some other reason than that I was going cross country to go to college and she didn't approve, though we may never know what that "other reason" could be.]

Who knows how I might have fared if on my first day being on campus (literally before the first 24 hours had transpire) the skinhead in my r.a. group hadn't demanded (I know the difference between friendly inquisitiveness and the inquisition) to know my SAT scores.

If only he knew exactly how I got into Princeton... he might have staged a sit-in of his own for the new president.

Instead, he watched (and listened) carefully for the moment I might display my less-worthy-status, ready to pounce. He never got that chance. I am not sure if it is because my guard never came down around him or if I just exude intellectualism. I seem to recall sometime that first week he felt the need to reassure me that I had passed the test because I had used a vocabulary word he had obviously memorized in a way that seemed more obscure and therefore more erudite than he had ever heard someone use it.

I am sure it says more about the people he had heard speaking before me than it does about my use of my wide-ranging vocabulary (I do like to USE 10 cent words). {wink} Either way, that little dance routine did not inspire me to get up close and personal with any white folks on campus.

All I can say is that for me, that early challenge colored my experience. It created a wariness in me that hadn't occurred to me at all before I got on the plane. It certainly did not make me want to bend over backwards to FIT IN somewhere I was clearly not expected to be.

I have returned to Princeton. Not as a flag waving, nazi-youth-sign-making, orange and black wearing way. Making it through meant that I would forever be a part of Princeton not just that Princeton would forever be a part of me. I knew, even as a student, that as an alumna I would have more power than any student could ever have.

Living just around the corner (in Trenton, that is) from PU for 10 years following graduation gave me the opportunity to try to develop a better relationship with the university community as an alumna than I had as a student. I have spent more time in Firestone as an alumna than I ever did as a student using its resources to prepare for courses I taught, to research any and everything and to escape the heat in the summer! I have had the opportunity to take in more of the fascinating lectures than I could ever fit into my too-busy, too-involved student's schedule.

Now, 3000 miles away from Princeton, I participate in the Princeton Prize in Race Relations committee, having found, as Michelle might say, something about which I could finally be proud at Princeton. I am now secretly (only a secret in that I haven't done anything about it yet) plotting to help start an endowment for the Third World Center (which, yes, I will continue to call that til I die not because I have anything against Carl Fields) with endowed chairs for Latino and African American studies program(s)/departments -- hey dreams can only come true if you actually have them and then act on them!

I did go to reunions, once, for my tenth. I couldn't bring myself to attend any of the events without stopping for at least one cocktail -- probably the most traditional Princeton ritual I have ever embraced (the drinking that is). Though not nearly as painful as I thought it would be, I don't have an overwhelming desire to go to reunions again before my 20th.