Wednesday, March 23, 2005

Class Distinctions ar Harvard (you're kidding, aren't you?)

It seems that some at Harvard have their boxers in a bunch over the possibility of maid service (insert joke here) for students. Cafe Hayek points us to this article in the Crimson that says,

There are already plenty of services at Harvard that sharpen the differences between socioeconomic classes. Harvard Student Agency Cleaners, for example, lets some students pick up clean and neatly-folded clothes in crackling plastic bags. The less well-off among us, however, make semi-weekly journeys to the basement with bulging mesh laundry bags and quarters in hand. These differences extend to the social sphere as well—to final clubs composed predominately of wealthy young men, or to basic activities, like eating out, that some students cannot afford to enjoy. But while class differences are a fact of life—yes, there are both rich and poor people at Harvard—there is no reason to exacerbate these differences further with a room-cleaning service.
Click here for the whole piece.

I find it hard to believe that students (at Harvard of all places) would be offended by the fact that some can afford maid service and some can't. Maybe this is my middle-class mill-town upbringing showing, but if we had a student on our dorm floor (decidedly non-Harvard state school) with maid service, we'd hang out in his room so that we could sit somewhere without worrying about catching a case of the creeping crud.

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