James McAuley asks today in the Harvard Crimson: “What is it with Harvard students and pretending to be poor?”

James is a polite guy, so he doesn’t name names. He cites “the more well-moneyed of our peers,” he cites “many affluent students,” he cites “wealthy individuals” and “wealthy peers” and “wealthy Harvard undergraduates.” And he cites people with specific phony behaviors too: those who take the T instead of a taxi, those who don’t have multiple hot chocolates every week, those who complain about the prices at Grafton Street.

So why is it, after all this specificity, that I get the impression that James wrote this op-ed with one or two people in mind?

Think about it. Either James wrote this because he has friends who are rich but pretend to be poor, in which case he’s not a very good friend, or he wrote this about people whom he only sort of knows, in which case you have to wonder what makes him so confident that they’re “pretending” to be anything other than what they are.

I can’t believe I’m defending those “many affluent students,” but I have to say: I don’t recognize this supposed phenomenon at all. On the contrary, I think a lot of non-wealthy Harvard students are subtly pressured into adopting the ways of the wealthier set. You agree to go somewhere out of your price range because your friends are going, or you make up some exciting spring vacation so that you’re Caribbean-hopping acquaintances don’t think you’re boring, or you buy some conformist piece of clothing or electronics even though it’s overpriced.

Hey, I don’t have hard evidence for any of this. It’s social commentary; there’s no such thing as hard evidence unless you name names. But McAuley’s commentary did not strike home for me. It wasn’t recognizable. Let me know if you think my alternative is more plausible.

Photo credit: Flickr stream of Marine*B

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