How free is the stuff we get for free in orientation?
And by free I don’t mean that we may have already paid for it with our tuition, but rather the kinds of attachments and predispositions that receiving all these things create in us. I’m a starting 1L and I’ve been struck by how many free things we get. Have you thought about how much all these things cost? And how painlessly we get them? Backpacks, UBS drives, water and coffee bottles, hard hats etc…they are all great and today I picked one of each and a couple of some. But for some reason, I feel guilty about it; I think of the people that served me the fajitas today–mostly Latinas in their 30s and 40s–and think of the sticker on a light post in Hastings, “Prestige cannot feed us.” Am I that different from them? Those workers in crimson shirts I see every morning cutting the grass, cleaning pipes, taking my trash? Do I deserve their serving me?
I fear I will get used to this lifestyle of free things. Who doesn’t like to be pampered? Yet a different picture arises when we ask, who has to do the pampering? Remember the Michael Jackson video “Remember the Time?” In one of the starting sequences, women around Eddy Murphy are gently blowing wind at him; isn’t that nice? In much the same way I feel when I receive free food from a Salvadorian mother speaking in short English sentences.