Embracing Elitism: An Exonian’s Existential Quest

Around this time last year, an anonymous post appeared on a certain private social media group that shall not be named. Viewable to most current Exonians and a number of alumni, it read, “I honestly loved the International Student assembly, but not for the reasons you think. While, yes, it is nice to have a bunch of rich kids from other cultures for ‘diversity,’ they rarely add anything meaningful to our campus.” The author went on to call me out by name as a rare counterexample of someone with “a beautiful message” who “didn't attend an American private school.” The message finally concluded with, “I want to see more students like Mai [...] enough with the false sense of being cultured just because we have rich kids from exotic places.”

Needless to say, the International Student Alliance Board meeting the following week was an interesting experience. Everyone had read the post and came in overflowing with arguments as to why it was false.

“People think we live in castles or something.” “We don’t fly around in private jets.” “They negate our experience without even bothering to find out about our cultures.”

In a way, these discussions were not new; recurring episodes of the how to combat international means rich stereotype theme that had been resurfacing again and again in ISAB meetings ever since my prep fall. Still, the visible tension in the room almost made me feel guilty about what I had said during assembly; I too was frustrated by the brazen assumption that the author had made while constructing their argument, the antagonistic accusation that “rich kids [...] rarely add anything meaningful to our campus” and did not bring unique cultures and perspectives of their own.         

But I will confess one thing. What ran through my mind during that meeting was a conversation I had with another international student on financial aid. “These other international kids talk about hopping on a plane to places like the UK and France every summer for fun,” they had said. “I don’t get how there are people who think of that as normal.” After all, wealth and poverty are relative, are they not? A person’s shack can easily be another’s castle.

I will also confess another thing. During that assembly last year, I did not tell you the whole story. Please don’t judge me too harshly - don’t you also sympathize with the very human urge of emphasizing one’s struggles and skimming over manifestations of privilege?

Well, I will try to make amends, nonetheless, by listing out the details I omitted then: yes, I could not pay for a boarding school agent, the common path that led most Vietnamese students to elite American institutions, but I did have a mother who understands enough English to spend an hour every day during application season and fill in parent questionnaires and financial aid application forms.

Yes, I spent my middle school years “jam-packed into moldy classrooms with fifty kids,” but that school also consistently ranked first amongst all public schools in Saigon, with teachers who held master’s degrees. I never studied English literature in school, and there was no reputable public library in the whole city, but my parents made enough so that buying 200,000-VN-dong copies of Anna Karenina and Midnight’s Children was not a problem. I generally do not have to worry much about being thrown off a motorbike because my family owns a car. Only 1.6 percent of Vietnamese citizens do.

While I do not wish to preach, being myself susceptible, to justify that I am here because I deserve to be after having overcome many struggles, I sometimes think it would be far more productive if we all reframe our narrative. I am not referring solely to the international student community or any other specific group, but Exonians as a whole. Instead of pointing fingers, how about we collectively acknowledge that we are indeed what others perceive the “stereotypical Exonian” to be — over-privileged, clueless kids?

No matter how dire your circumstances were at birth, something must have gone incredibly right in your life for you to be at Exeter. That may  be five generations of Harvard-educated alumni on Wall Street or an encouraging public school teacher who pushed you to break out from the mold.

Phillips Exeter Academy is an elite institution. This fundamental fact is one which Exonians of all ages have tried to grapple with, whether they were on financial aid or not, and generally ended up dusting underneath the rug.

For it is hard to see that this is how things should be. Running my fingers through the endless rows of books in the nine-story Louis Kahn library, listening to a speech by the Director of the Smithsonian Museum of Natural Science or another poet who just won the Pulitzer Prize, it is hard to see that this is how things should be.

On the one hand, it is almost blasphemous to not be grateful and to not think that I will give back to the school with whatever wealth I generate in my career because this institution opened so many doors for me. But why all this money for the high school education of an extremely select group of teenagers?

An economically-minded friend once warned me from being bogged down by the cost of opportunities; I still cannot help thinking about the number of schools that can be built in Africa with the money we spent on our new field house. In rationalizing our disposition, Exonians are forced to believe that the system is meritocratic and just, and that we had earned our place, either by pure genetic superiority (which reeks of political incorrectness), or by working hard.

Alternatively, we can all admit that we are elites. Socioeconomic background is such a taboo topic because it is so inextricably tied to guilt. Yet ironically, our ingrained sense of antagonism against the obscenely rich has compelled the privileged to present themselves as underprivileged and consequently forget about those who genuinely struggle to obtain their daily bread. Being on financial aid at Exeter means that one cannot pay for a fifty-thousand dollar tuition. That is hardly the definition of the global poverty line. And while, yes, it would be nice to have those extra dollars in our Lion cards to spend at Grill because everyone else does, but is it really that necessary?

Sometimes, I look at the things I own now and don’t recognize myself. My friends back home certainly don’t.