Penn's grasp on reality may be flawed: Pre-professionals lack a social consciousness

Unlike my usual dinners at Penn, where I sit at the 1920 Commons or Beijing and eat meat-laden meals and gripe over how many cover letters and resumes I have to send out, or give grumpy reports of the companies that have rejected me, I had a different sort of meal a few nights ago. I was invited to eat dinner at an old high school friend's dorm at the University of Minnesota, joined by her dread-wearing and Birkenstock-sporting friends. Sitting on the floor, eating vegetable curry over rice and drinking soy milk followed by green tea, I found myself listening to debates on how yuppied the Minneapolis/St. Paul area had gotten. They discussed how this cafe or that diner had been turned into an upscale wine bistro or how it had to be shut down because it did not attract the right type of people. I did not have much to say since these dilemmas of social consciousness rarely enter my mind when I am at school. Only fleetingly, like when I notice the absurdity of eating sushi at Fresh Grocer's outdoor seating court while beggars are curled up on the corner of the sidewalk inches away, do I give it any thought. And like many of us at Penn, who certainly do not seem to lose sleep over it, we do even less about it. Instead, we are the ones who make the system roll. Many of us will soon be contributing to a tax system that benefits the very rich while hurts the very poor. Even more importantly, we are blindly letting disparaging inequalities happen just a few blocks away in the city of brotherly love. I, for one, have my excuses. I was too consumed with the early spring scramble of resume drop and interviews. I had to concentrate on my GPA to get a good job so that I can earn a sufficient amount of money. And even if I had the time to do anything about it, or even if it is a constant pressure on my mind, I would have no clue what to do to help remedy the situation. My dinner companions, on the other hand, offered an alternative solution to the path so many Penn students choose to follow. Many of them, about to graduate college summa cum laud and qualified to enter the professional job market, were instead choosing not to do so. They opted instead for occupations that provided only enough to make ends meat -- a far cry from the Wharton executive. They are against the American capitalistic system, a system that engenders disparaging inequality, and they have chosen not to enter it. One girl was working at Caribou Coffee for $7.50 an hour. They had liberal arts majors like French and Art instead of going on the Penn pre-professional track and concentrating in Finance to make $1200 a week as a summer analyst at a Wall Street bank. We, at Penn, however, seem to want to live within this system. They desire to live outside of it. I ask: which method is better at helping battle social inequality? I ask this because I just do not know. There are three questions I wish to consider: who has the ability to make, and who will make, a difference? And what results are being produced by each lifestyle? While both groups, the neo-hippies and the Penn pre-professionals, can postpone taking an active stance in order to enact change, the Penn pre-professionals may have the means to do so. Those who are financially secure have the ability to separate themselves from the less fortunate -- unfortunately, we begin to worry when it is too late. I use as an example of the power of money Virginia Woolf's A Room of One's Own. Woolf wrote that in order for women to control themselves, history, culture or anything for that matter, they first need money. Money for a private room in which to think and work, but most of all, money is needed to purchase free time. If spent merely making enough for a living, there would be no place for power. With money, donations can be made to build youth recreation centers or set up scholarship funds so that inner-city kids can attend college. At upper level positions, without having to grovel all day performing manual labor, there will be energy left to build houses for Habitat for Humanity or tutor or work in soup kitchens. Sure it does not produce the same effect as working for an non-governmental organization (NGO) or devoting a career to social work, but within their own means, the business-type Penn engenders is more capable of making a difference than the neo-hippies who are forced to scramble for money. As to who will make a difference, my own experience, as well as those of many students at Penn, has shown that by getting caught up in the game of chasing money and prestige, we become blind to anything that is not directly linked with our goal. Included in this category is social consciousness. At least the neo-hippies acknowledge a flaw in the system. At least they wonder what happens to residents of poor neighborhoods, pushed out of their homes by higher rents in an effort to spur gentrification. But as for the results of each lifestyle, the neo-hippies are not only left less-empowered than their professional counterparts, but they might be hurting the people they hope to help. They are taking jobs, which they are overqualified for, away from those who need it and cannot get anything else. Neither group is offering any complete solution to the problem. Then again, if one did, we would see the equality gap converge instead of diverge, as it has been for the past decade. Penn pre-professionals, too busy, and neo-hippies, too cynical, may have forgotten that social consciousness means also looking at the pros, and not just the cons of the American capitalistic system, however flawed it may be.

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