Last year some students in one of my ethics classes complained to me about what they saw as the excessive importance that money had at Georgetown. Indeed, one went so far as to claim that the single most important division among Georgetown students “has nothing to do with race, gender or sexual orientation. It’s about how much money your parents have.”
That seems overstated to me. Yet, I’ve heard this kind of concern enough to know it’s a real and painful issue for some Georgetown students. The student who can’t room with her friends in a townhouse the next year because she can’t afford what they can. The guy who chooses his friends based on what kind of entertainment and weekend lifestyle he can afford. The alienating sense of some students that many at Georgetown live in an easier and prettier world because of the advantages that money offers them.
The problem is not just imagined. A recent college ranking measuring the socioeconomic diversity issue suggests that Georgetown has a ways to go in this regard. It is a complex issue – one that can’t be adequately addressed here (even if I had a good handle on all the related issues, which I don’t).
The university will have to address the problem in its own way, but the issue is not just one for the administration. The problem has to do with the ethos or culture at Georgetown and the various ways in which a lot of us (all of us?) allow wealth to matter in ways it shouldn’t. And, in light of the student’s complaint above, we can imagine that one place where socioeconomic differences play an inordinate role is in the way sub-communities are formed at Georgetown – and in the way that those sub-communities interact, or don’t, with other sub-communities.
Are there any concrete ways we can work to diminish the excessive role financial status has in how we form relationships and build communities here at Georgetown?
I suspect that there are a lot of small things that each of us can do; just becoming conscious of the issue is an important first step. But here’s another suggestion: Bring back the virtue of modesty. That may seem a pretty goofy idea. After all, modesty has little to do with the issue at hand, it would seem. And, in addition, as far as virtues go, it is not particularly well esteemed. The perception of most is that it is a sexist throwback to Victorian prudery that merits no recovery.
The popular perception of modesty, however, does not do justice to the Western tradition’s ideas about the virtue. Thomas Aquinas, for example, did not connect modesty with any concern for suppressing sexuality; nor did he make it the peculiar obligation of women. He did, however, associate it with appropriate dress and attire, but the issue for him had little to do with the concerns of Victorian England, but rather was one of truthfulness: how can we attire ourselves in ways that reflect the truth of our being?
Does our attire express the dignity of our humanity? Excess and gaudiness in clothing fails to be virtuous if they distract others from the real locus of our human greatness and dignity: our capacity as free moral agents to love and to form communities of friendships with others and, ultimately, with God.
The issue which the virtue of modesty raises for us is how our attire sends signals to others about what we most esteem in human existence. The question it forces us to ask is whether we are sending the right signals
I’m not clued in on the latest student fashions, but my sense is that one rather popular fashion statement doesn’t seem particularly modest. I’ll call it the opulently-accessorized grunge look – an odd mixture of campus casual with wealthy flourishes. A baseball cap and blue jeans with the huge diamond earrings. Khaki shorts combined with wrinkled shirts bearing upscale logos. Sweats with expensive designer watches.
I don’t mind the casual element in all the above; I’m a big fan of it. It’s the other element that I have questions about. I wonder if it’s possible to turn down the volume of these displays of wealth a bit. It would be the modest thing to do. But also it would diminish the role of wealth in one domain of our culture and life here at Georgetown (i.e., that of popular fashion). It would allow that our attire send a signal to everyone we meet that what matters most deeply to us – and how we form friendships – has little to do with finances.
I think such modesty would be good for building a more dollar-blind community.
Fr. Christopher Steck, S.J. is associate professor of theology and a chaplain-in-residence in New South Hall. He can be reached at cwsgeorgetown.edu. As This Jesuit Sees It. appears every other Friday.
