“In addition to such programs, university administrators can do more to understand where students come from. Lumping all lower-income undergraduates together produces a distorted view of the experiences of poor students. The difficulty of adjusting to an environment like Renowned [UCB] for the Doubly Disadvantaged cannot be understated. And while the Privileged Poor face some of the same difficulties, it is important to remember that their knowledge of elite academic settings helps ease their transition. Paying attention to these diverse experiences and the structural forces that influence them, such as poverty and segregation, can go a long way toward helping to design initiatives to promote all students’ sense of belonging.” –Anthony Abraham Jack, The Privileged Poor, pg. 78

While the first part of the extra credit assignment entailed attending an event for your own intellectual enrichment, this second part is asking you to apply your sociological expertise enrich your own institution. No matter how you feel about UCB—good, great, or bad—it will soon be your alma mater. For that reason, let us all try to make this place a little better for the cohorts to come.

Your extra credit assignment is to produce a proposal with a specific recommendation for how UCB can redress class-based inequalities for students who come here. As we learned through Jack’s book, the constraints and/or opportunities that our pre-college SES brings are not neutralized once we “make it” to this elite institution. Your class status shapes the way you experience this institution, whether you be privileged poor, doubly disadvantaged, or upper income; and as we learned from the book, the effects are not only material, but social.

Please submit a proposal offering an idea or recommendation for a structural intervention that the institution could do to address the “equity & inclusion” aspect of UCB’s mandate for Diversity, Equity & Inclusion as it relates to class inequality.

• One to two pages, single spaced

• Identify the problem you are addressing

• Identify the population that your recommendation serves. Identify a specific group (think intersectionally!”) that you are focusing on.

• Make a recommendation. It must be structural/institutional. No individual level suggestions will be accepted.

• What would it take to pull off your suggestion?

• In fact, small and doable interventions are most welcomed.