Incoming Freshmen

I was asked to notarize signatures for incoming Washington University in St. Louis students who needed to prepare HIPPA and other documents for their parents.  We sat at a table just outside the Wash U dorms and watched the cars dropping off their stuff, some of which probably wouldn’t fit into dorm rooms.

It was interesting to see the smiling young faces (and other attractive body parts--Seinfeld reference again) come to the table.  Several things stood out: Virtually all students came with their parents, which was different from when I arrived in 1966 with only my father’s army locker and a suitcase .  One student had his car, a new-looking BMW, shipped from New York to a service  which was receiving packages and other things like cars for students who had not arrived yet.

The incoming crowd was much more diverse that the mainly White crowd in ‘sixty-six.  There were many Asians, and Brown people.  Still, there was a slight majority of Whites, but the one thing that stuck out was the virtual absence of Black families dropping off their kids.

I realize I was looking at only a subset of people, like the blind men touching the elephant.  However, it seemed to me that while Black people have made progress in the past 58 years, there still is a dearth of well-off Black families who can afford to send their children to an out-of-town top-ranked school, even with a healthy scholarship,  and then shepard them a thousand miles to set up shop.. Why is this important? Because while Wash U and other so-called top ranked schools produce many brilliant graduates they also produce alot of people who will become or are part of the upper 9%.

I’m not suggesting that Wash U discriminates.  Just that the subset of the upper 9% who have both smart kids and are wealthy enough to take off a week to deliver their children to an out-of-town school is probably still short of Black people.