Alfred Lubrano, author of Limbo: Blue-Collar Roots, White-Collar Dreams spoke to an audience of about 30 students in Harris Hall on Thursday night. Lubrano’s speech about his experiences as a lower-income student ascending the class ladder capped off a week of events called “Money Matters” hosted by Northwestern’s Quest Scholars, co-sponsored by Inspire Media, College Democrats, the Dean’s Office, the President’s Office, SESP, Department of Campus Inclusion and Community and the Center for Student Involvement.
Lubrano’s talk focused largely on his specific experiences as a lower-income student, attending Columbia University for undergraduate school and Northwestern University as a graduate student. The transition to being amongst those of a higher socioeconomic class, Lubrano explained, was not seamless.
“I never felt so out of place, so dumbly lost, coming from a ginormous public high school where we thought race riots were part of the curriculum,” Lubrano said of his first day of classes at Columbia.
As he continued as a student at Northwestern, Lubrano became used to feeling singled out due to his class background. “When I first got here, the woman who was in charge of financial aid called me into her office and told me ‘You’re getting the most financial aid of anyone in your class,’” Lubrano said.
Lubrano closed the event with some comments about advantages that people who originally come from lower socioeconomic backgrounds have over those who begin in more middle-class ones.
“We won’t take ourselves for granted and we won’t stop working hard to avoid the alternative lives that we had,” Lubrano said.
Lubrano then took questions from the audience, such as one from a student who asked whether or not he moved back to the neighborhood he was originally from, or if he moved to a higher-class area after graduating from college.
Members of the audience seemed able to relate to Lubrano’s story, and to see how what he said resonated with students at Northwestern in similar situations to his.
“It was interesting how well he was able to relate his own personal experiences regarding income and education to current Northwestern students,” Weinberg sophomore Elizabeth Szokol said.
Earlier events in the “Money Matters” series included a fireside with President Morton Schapiro and a film screening of First Generation, a film about the accessibility of college for those of lower-income classes.