Ever struggling to embrace its diverse student body, the University of Wisconsin-Madison has deployed its Center for the First-Year Experience to put on a new event for this fall’s incoming freshmen. The First Night at the Overture Center event has been targeted to both first-year and transfer students in an effort to connect them to UW campus and culture.

Much like the Go Big Read campaign works to give all new students a common literary experience, the First Night at the Overture Center attempts to provide a common cultural experience. Although the mission doesn’t deviate from most Wisconsin Welcome events, its attempt to connect students to “culture” through an event at the Overture Center for the Arts leaves this writer unsettled.

As a fourth-year student at the UW, this event strikes me as yet another tired attempt by this university to force cultural assimilation on its low-income and working-class students through practices that can be characterized as nothing short of institutionalized classism.

As a first-generation college student and proud member of the working class, I question any attempt by the university to share a cultural experience with students. Often, these “cultural experiences” only provide a narrow, upper-middle-class-rooted portrayal of culture. I am sure some readers are wondering why I am even bringing socioeconomic status/class into this discussion, so I turn to the experts for support.

Dr. Will Barratt from the Department of Educational Leadership, Administration, and Foundations at Indiana State University explains, “Social class is a collection of subcultures arranged in a hierarchy of prestige.” He breaks this concept down further, explaining that majority culture — often middle class — constructs normative ideas of prestige around attributes associated with the upper-middle class or upper class. In turn, these ideas are reinforced by the media and social organizations such as colleges and universities.

Barratt further breaks down social class into forms of capital — economic, cultural, social and academic — each correlated to a certain social class. Most relevant to our discussion of the First Night at the Overture Center event is his definition of cultural capital, defined as the accumulation of the knowledge and skills associated with the upper-middle class. In addition to educational achievement, these include cultural objects, titles and other trappings of taste and culture.

Further illustrating the role of higher education, he writes, “From aesthetic development to etiquette dinners, cultural capital is the target of much student affairs programming. For the upper-middle class cultural capital is the most salient feature of social class.”

Through such events as the First Night at the Overture Center, the university is working to arm students with cultural capital, which some may argue is the exact intent of student affairs programming at large universities. Though I agree accessing cultural capital is what some students hope to get out of their time at the UW, this is certainly not what all students desire.

In his book “Limbo: Blue-Collar Roots, White-Collar Dreams,” Alfred Lubrano tackles the seldom-discussed topic of blue-collar culture. Lubrano coined the term “straddlers” to define individuals stuck between their blue-collar roots and new white-collar realities. Weighing in on cultural capital, he writes, “People born into the middle class to parents with college degrees have lived lives filled with what French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu calls ‘cultural capital.’

Again, as someone deeply tied to their working-class roots who intends to return to her working-class community post-graduation, upper middle class cultural capital offers me little benefit. In fact, such capital is actually more of a liability than an asset for students in my position, with my goals.

To explore assimilation methods, Lubrano cites working-class studies economist Charles Sackrey, who explains the middle-class world (to new arrivals) as “A new neighborhood [with] the danger of a new neighborhood …” He continues, “Upper-class people do look down on us. So in your strategy for living, you have to figure out how to make it from one day to the next. It’s an endless trek.”

Sackrey directs working-class students that “You can fit in; you can decide to overwhelm and be better than them; you can live in the middle class but refuse to assimilate; or you can stand aside and criticize, and never be a part of things.” For myself, I have refused to assimilate to middle-class culture, instead fiercely holding on to my roots in a daily struggle not to lose my cultural identity in a sea of middle- to upper-class values.

The First Night at the Overture Center is harmless on the surface, was planned by harmless staff members and will likely be experienced as harmless by most in attendance. But to students like myself, it promises to be yet another way for institutionalized classism at this university to harm and undermine low-income, working-class and first-generation college students.

Chynna Haas ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in gender/women’s studies, communication arts and American Indian studies.*-