Don’t Coddle the Coasts

Last year, my hall in Thayer had a bulletin board with a map of the United States labeled “Where We Are From.” Attached to the map were pieces of orange paper with the names of all the hall’s residents. The coasts were covered in these little slips: San Franciscans crowded into the Pacific Ocean; Manhattanites spilled over into New Jersey. In between the orange masses was a wide expanse of empty map with three exceptions: single slips on Chicago, Minneapolis, and St. Louis. Aside from Florida and Texas, the Southern states were completely empty.

The Thayer map is not an exact representation of the Harvard student body, but it does reflect the trends. According to admissions data published in the Harvard University Gazette, 44 percent of the class of 2011 is from the Northeast (New England and mid-Atlantic regions), 20 percent is from the West, 16 percent is from the South, and 11 percent is from the Midwest (the rest are international). These numbers hardly match up with the actual population distribution in the U.S. As reported by the Census Bureau in 2005, only 18 percent of the population lives in the Northeast, 36 percent lives in the South and 22 percent in the Midwest. Only the West is proportionally represented.

The inflated number of Northeasterners at Harvard is relatively easy to understand for geographical, familial, and cultural reasons. But these excuses do not hold for the other regions of the U.S. Why should Westerners, who are much farther away than Midwesterners or Southerners, be more likely to come to Harvard?

The answer is, of course, partly economic, but perceptions are also important. Many people on the coasts view the center states as flyover country populated by hillbillies. Many in the center, conversely, see those on the coasts, particularly the Northeast, as elitist snobs. Unfortunately, Harvard is often considered the epitome of these stereotypes.

I come from Missouri, one of the states where this view is common. When I go home to St. Louis, it’s hard to ignore the raised eyebrows my Harvard bumper sticker gets. The consensus is that Midwesterners are more comfortable staying in the Midwest, where schools are friendly and unpretentious. This prejudices against Northeast schools like Harvard rest primarily on the perception that the Ivy League is a place for rich New Yorkers with extensive legacy connections.

Of course, although this was the case 50 years ago, Harvard has taken drastic measures since then to alter the makeup of its student body and has succeeded in greatly diversifying the college. But Harvard’s image has not changed at the same rate. If Harvard wants to get an applicant pool that is geographically representative of the U.S., it needs to address this issue directly.

Some might think that geographic diversity from within the U.S. is not important, and that it’s Harvard’s global reach that matters. This argument ignores the vast diversity of experiences and views of people within North America. Whether you come from a rural or urban area, a conservative or a liberal enclave, and so on—your culture affects your outlook on life. It’s valuable to meet people with diverse experiences—perhaps even more valuable for the streetwise New Yorker to meet a “backwards” Iowan than to meet a cosmopolitan Londoner.

The problem could be remedied by using Harvard’s Undergraduate Minority Recruitment Program (UMRP) as a model. UMRP, which is staffed by current undergraduates available to address specific concerns about life at Harvard, helps prospective students from minority backgrounds overcome negative stereotypes associated with Harvard. The College should set up a similar program for Midwestern and Southern prospective students, recruiting current Harvard students from those regions to return home and talk to high school students about misconceptions. Such a program could show students that Midwesterners and Southerners are welcome and can fit in at Harvard, and that their future classmates will be (for the most part) normal people, even if they did grow up in one of the 13 original colonies.

Ideally, the Thayer map will one day be more than two orange coasts with space in between. But for that to happen, Harvard needs to step up efforts to do away with prejudices that often dominate college application decisions.

Caroline A. Bleeke ’10, a Crimson editorial editor, is an English concentrator in Leverett House.