Speaker 1: I remember the first time I stepped foot on the Amherst College campus. It was with my mother and brother. We drove up from Miami. The flights were too expensive, and besides, we were all afraid of flying anyway. We pulled up to Pratt Dorm, got out of the car, took deep breaths of fresh country air, but then my brother starts to laugh. He saw a little critter run across the yard. He said, Tony, y'all pay how much for school here, and y'all got rats? Y'all, it was a chipmunk. We had never seen a real one before. His joke barely hid his excitement. It did nothing for his nerves. We were in another world. So yeah, me, here, a Harvard professor in an opera house? It's a testament to the fact that even un-dreamt dreams come true. I'm the proud son of a middle school security guard, the brother of a janitor, both hardworking but neither college educated. I'm from a poor, segregated community in Miami that even my local newspaper called A Place Time Forgot. There are often more struggles than celebrations. High school was the finish line. When I was growing up, there were only three Ivy League schools, Harvard, Yale, and Princeton. And the only reason why Princeton makes the list is because of the fresh Prince of Bel-Air. But such is the pernicious power of poverty. It isolates and it separates. It creates two worlds occupied by the haves and the have-nevers. So much so that people equate poor students like myself making it into college as having made it. The golden ticket not to Willy Wonka's chocolate factory, but to those bastions of power and privilege. Yet getting in is only half the battle. Colleges like many organizations have invested millions in diversity recruitment, but have thought less about what to do when students arrive on campus. Access ain't inclusion. Part of the reason why is because colleges get their new diversity from old sources. My research is the first to show that colleges get half of their poor black students from boarding and day schools. One third of Latinos are too. I call these students the privileged poor. Colleges like poor students from private schools because they have cultural capital. Those taken-for-granted ways of being that are valued in mainstream institutions. The other poor black and Latino students attend local, typically distressed public schools. They don't enter with the same cultural capital. I call these students the doubly disadvantaged. It was my interviews with 103 undergraduates that show how poverty and inequality stop those who made it. You see, when students enter college, whether a community college or an Ivy League institution, they encounter a hidden curriculum, a system of unwritten rules and unsaid expectation. Colleges throw around class terms like office hours, yet they only say when they are. They never say what they are. You see, colleges expect students to be comfortable engaging faculty. This is the road to recommendation letters. It's the road to emotional support when times get rough. Connecting with faculty is even valuable for your GPA. One research project showed that each visit to office hours corresponds with a 1.25% bump in your final grade for that course. Yet this expectation goes unsaid. There's no manuals of dos or don'ts, whens or hows. And unspoken, if undergraduates want something, they will come, operate as the gold ticket. The college corollary to the squeaky wheel gets the grease. Imagine the culture shock then that the doubly disadvantaged experience. It was otherworldly for Valeria, a lower income student from the Midwest. Her teachers spent more time maintaining order than making connections. She entered college believing in the American dream. She believed that her advancement should be about the work. It was how her father saw the world. It was also how he told her to see it as well. Mija, you don't want to get ahead by kissing ass, right? You want it based on hard work. It'll take longer, Mija, but you'll feel more proud. Let us not be quick to label this father's advice as bad. In 2016, a dean from Dean College reached out to me. She wanted to know how could she increase academic engagement among her lower income students. I said, let's start with something basic. Let's define office hours. Something I said resonated with her. When she finally asked her students why they didn't visit her in office hours, they said, Miss, we thought that was your time to do your work in your office undisturbed. It's a reasonable assumption to make. Something was lost in translation that had nothing to do with English proficiency. But let us remember the privileged poor, those alumni of prep schools where contact with faculty is not only encouraged, but built into the structure of the place. Students like Agun, a reflective Latina, Agun hails from a troubled neighborhood, but attended a New England boarding school. She was taught in high school by PhDs. PhDs were also dorm parents. She entered college feeling entitled to talk to a professor and say, hey, I want to meet with you. My high school told me I can do that. It's actually my right. Even when her professor was away from campus, she had no qualms calling him for virtual office hours despite friends' surprised looks. Students from America's forgotten neighborhoods and ignored schools are truly disadvantaged if colleges continue to privilege privilege. We cannot assume that all students have had a chance to practice, let alone master these skills before they arrive on campus. And as office hours in college become open-door policies at work, this process, it can continue. We wonder why we can hire diverse applicants, but we can't seem to promote them. Recommendation letters in college are dependent upon relationships with faculty, just as promotion at work is dependent upon relationships with superiors. For me, I went to Gulliver Prep and learned how to navigate office hours similar to Agun. I got those letters of recommendation, one even coming from the college president. I learned that it's not just what you know and who you know, but also about who knows you and how well they do. But I am not so naive. The stumbling blocks to inclusion are not merely social. Colleges take for granted not just what students know, but also what they can't afford. Sometimes the very policies that colleges implement hurt all lower-income students, the privileged poor and the doubly disadvantaged alike. Colleges' decision to shut down during spring break, assuming that all people can leave for fun in the sun, is a case in point. But what if you can't go home? What if you don't have a home to go to? What about for you if hurt and home are synonymous? Campus for better or for worse is your refuge, yet professors flee and friends leave. Buildings close. They even turn down the heat in the dorms. You walk past the cafeteria and the lights are out and the chairs, they're stacked on top of the tables. You walk past the cafeteria and the lights are out. You literally can still, though, see the plates and trays, the forks and knives through the fence that bar you from entry. It comes as no surprise why poor students like Ariana call spring break the real hunger games. But just how close it comes to living in the districts is downright depressing. When campuses close, students combat food insecurity, not knowing where their next meal is coming from. Sometimes desperate times call for desperate measures. I attended a conference for first-generation college students, and I met a young woman. She was white, witty, and wore her hair in a pixie haircut. She had on a blue Columbia University sweatshirt. She stood brave in a room to discuss how she spent her last spring break at one of the most wealthiest colleges in the country. She increased her online dating activity the week before spring break to secure dates the following week. Banking on gender norms of older men paying for the first meal, she treated OkCupid as if it was DoorDash. She treated Tinder as if it was Grubhub. Outpriced and overextended, she offered her time. This makes no sense. But this is a reality for many students across the country. Two out of every five undergraduates in America are food insecure. Instead of investing time learning linear algebra, many invest their time making ends meet. The question of if diversity is worth it is ever-present, and not just at colleges but at organizations of all stripes. The answer is yes, it is. But we should not be surprised when certain new groups struggle. These unwritten rules and injurious hurdles don't just trip them up. It keeps them on the outs. We must move from access to inclusion, and data will help in this endeavor. I've shared with you just two issues that undercut diversity's efforts, the hidden curriculum and food insecurity. There are many more, both social and structural in nature. So I'll leave y'all with this. What else do we take for granted? Thank you.