Op-Ed
What Atkind ’07 Says About Us
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The Red Line
The Red Line
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To some in the Ithaca community, the problem with Alex Atkind ’07 is the problem with Cornell. In posts on newspaper forums and in discussion threads on Craigslist, the case of the Cornell “dog torturer” has come to reveal the resentment felt by Ithaca denizens toward Cornell students. Some mention the alcoholism encouraged by the Greek system, but fundamentally, the comments are about social class, about privilege, about the way it’s granted and the way it’s taken for granted.
What most angered online respondents — mostly Ithaca blue-collar workers (storeowners, clerks and janitors) — was Atkind’s sense of entitlement and invincibility in the entire matter. According to the police report of the incident, Atkind acted “cocky and arrogant” and said the incident “meant nothing to him, that he would do it again and that he ‘knows how the criminal justice system works.’”
This attitude, wrote one landlord, is evident when one walks through Collegetown on a Saturday morning: “[Y]ou will see brick and pieces of [landscaping] missing, trash all over the place, cans and bottles of beer all over. You’ll be stepping around puddles of vomit and seeing the puddles of urine around the doorways ...”
To us, the Friday-night ravage of Collegetown is par for the course, what most students at Cornell would consider typical college debauchery. But this is because, despite the talk of résumé-padding community and civil service, blue-collar workers are invisible to Cornell students. As the Marxist maxim goes, the “means of production” are obfuscated. What we see is college life; what we don’t see is everything that goes into making it.
Another post: “Typical arrogant Cornell college kid who thinks he can do anything and get away with it. I work in retail in Ithaca, and I see jerks like this, although maybe not quite to this extent, every day of my working life. The (little) extra business students like this bring us is not anywhere near worth the added headaches they cause us.”
This is not just a statement about one deluded student who thought he could get away with pouring bleach on his roommate’s dog and burning it with cigarettes. It is a larger observation about the fact that those in positions of privilege are held to a different standard than those who are not. In the same way that white-collar criminals get away with stripping thousands of Americans of their retirement (while an armed robber gets jail time), Atkind — because he is white, upper-class, Ivy League, because he “knows the system” and is part of its enfranchised elite — believes that the protections that come with privilege will kick in. In this case, he was too naïve to realize that, when it comes to these things, one doesn’t reveal the rules of the game we happen to be playing.
Another landlord commented on the fact that Cornell students “expect you to wipe for them but refuse to buy the toilet paper if you know what I mean. And they think that the price they pay in rent entitles them to treat the landlord and his or her [maintenance] people like servants or serfs ...”
One can see the understanding that money is entitlement and the resentment that comes on depending on those who have it. And there is also the comparison to the feudal system, the system of dependence and patronage where shop owners, clerks and landlords depend on Cornell students to make a living. In a way, this comparison evinces the fact that Cornell is only a microcosm of the larger society. Privileged families produce privileged kids who go to privileged schools and end up in positions of power: “The Ivy League is a breeding ground for the future Karl Roves of this country, and [I] don’t really see where there’s all that much that can be done about it,” read another post.
Perhaps on a wider scale, there is “nothing to be done about it,” but what is disturbing in the public sentiment on display all over the Internet is the glee that at least someone got what he was in for: “I know for a fact he’s a pampered Cornell Student,” said one resident who spoke to the Owego Pennysaver. “He has total disregard for anyone, but he’ll have it now.”
But he’ll have it now.
Atkind, in this roundabout way, is perceived as Cornell itself, the Ivy League and the plutocrats who run the country. The class resentment the episode has engendered — “Ivy League,” “Manhattanites,” “rich suburban kids,” “entitlement”— reveals the grudging capitulation to the rules of the game. Here is an example of someone who undeservingly got it all. This, to the discontent, is not about someone who squandered opportunity, but on how the system bestows opportunity.
In the United States, it is gauche — a conversation stopper — to mention class disparity. But in New Haven or Philadelphia, class divisions overlap with racial divisions, making them harder to ignore. They are on display in the streets. It is easier, in Upstate New York, to be blind to class divisions because the students at Cornell and the citizens of Ithaca on the surface look more similar. We can ignore class distinctions. After a night of drinking and college antics, we go home to bed.
Gabriel Arana is a graduate student in the College of Arts and Sciences. He can be contacted at garana@cornellsun.com. The Red Line appears Thursdays.