离开校园,哈佛的价值在哪里

What’s the Value of Harvard Without a Campus?
离开校园,哈佛的价值在哪里

Dumebi Adigwe, a rising sophomore studying mathematics at Harvard University, has no idea where she is going to live. This week, Harvard announced it would allow only up to 40% of its nearly 6,800 undergraduates on campus in the fall, the vast majority of them freshmen, and that all classes would be held online.

作为一名在哈佛大学(Harvard University)主修数学、即将升入大二的学生,杜梅毕·阿迪格维(Dumebi Adigwe)完全不知道自己要住在哪。本周,哈佛宣布,秋季将仅允许该校近6800名本科生中最多40%待在校内,大部分为新生,此外,所有课程都将在线上教授。

Adigwe, 18, is on a full scholarship and recently left her childhood home, which she called a “toxic place,” and moved in with a friend, where she planned on staying only through the summer, hoping that Harvard would reopen its doors in some capacity.

18岁的阿迪格维拿的是全额奖学金,在她口中,自己从小到大成长的家是一个“有害的地方”。最近,她刚刚离开那里,搬去和一个朋友一起住。她计划只在那里住一个暑假,指望哈佛能部分开放。

“Now there is no going back to school, I don’t have anywhere to go actually,” she said.

“现在学校是回不去了,实际上我没有地方去了,”她说。
 

7月,空荡荡的哈佛园。

For all college students, including and especially those from low-income backgrounds, the coronavirus has unraveled years of hard work and extracurricular hustle. Life on Harvard’s campus was meant to offer students the possibility of forming relationships with well-connected peers and professors, a social environment that could multiply opportunities. Now, the experience has narrowed into what is possible through a computer screen.

对所有大学生来说(尤其是那些来自低收入背景的学生),新冠病毒颠覆了他们多年来在课堂内外的努力。哈佛的校园生活应该要为学生提供与人脉广的同辈及教授建立关系的可能性,以及一个能够带来更多机会的社会环境。如今,这种经历被压缩成了通过一个电脑屏幕带来的可能性。

Princeton, Stanford, Johns Hopkins and other universities also announced reopening plans this week in which most classes would be held online. (According to The Chronicle of Higher Education, about 60% of colleges and universities are planning to allow all students back in classrooms.)

普林斯顿、斯坦福、约翰·霍普金斯及其他大学也于本周宣布了重开的计划。其中,大多数课程都将在线上教授。(根据《美国高等教育纪事周报》[Chronicle of Higher Education],约有60%的学院和大学计划允许全部学生重回课堂。)

Harvard, which will continue to charge full tuition, has said it will allow students who cannot “progress academically” at home to return to campus in the fall. But its process for evaluating which students qualify is opaque. The form the school is using to assess requests to return asks students to check various boxes indicating challenges at their home, including whether they have a Windows or Macintosh computer and face food insecurity.

哈佛将继续收取全额学费,该校已表示将允许那些无法在家中“取得学业进步”的学生秋季返校。但评定哪些学生符合这个条件的过程很不透明。该校用来评估返校请求的表格要求学生勾选各种选项表明在家里的困难,包括他们是否拥有一台微软或苹果系统的电脑,面临食物得不到保障的情况等。

It reiterates multiple times that the number of people allowed back on campus will be limited, forcing many students into what they perceive as competition with each other over who has a more difficult life.

表格上多次重申获准返校的人数有限,在许多学生看来,这让他们被迫围绕着谁的生活更困难这一点与彼此展开竞争。

Students understand that campus life cannot return to normal, and that the coronavirus itself is in no way the fault of universities. But in interviews this week, Adigwe and more than a dozen of her peers expressed frustration at various aspects of the Harvard reopening plan — particularly, at the $5,000 “room and board” allowance Harvard will give to every student who is eligible for financial aid and who does not live on campus.

学生们明白校园生活不会回归正常,也明白新冠病毒绝不是大学的错。但在本周的采访中,阿迪格维及十几名同学都对哈佛重开计划的多个方面表达了不满——尤其是对哈佛将向每个有资格获得助学金及不住校的学生发放的5000美元“食宿”津贴。

In many states, $5,000 spread over a semester is less than what someone would make from working a full-time minimum wage job. And the allowance does not correspond with what Harvard students have paid for room and board. (Last academic year, that was $17,682 for the full year — almost $9,000 a semester — according to the university’s website.)

在许多州,一个学期5000美元比一个人拿最低工资全职工作同等时间的钱要少。此外,该津贴与哈佛学生付的食宿费并不相符合。(据哈佛网站显示 ,上个学年,食宿费用为17682美元,每学期约为9000美元。)

Rachael Dane, a spokeswoman for Harvard College, said that the school acknowledged and accepted students’ frustration.

哈佛学院(Harvard College)发言人瑞秋·达内(Rachael Dane)表示,校方了解且接受学生的不满。

“We’re committed to working with students and we are doing that as they engage through the financial aid office,” she said.

“我们致力于与学生一起努力,并且是在学生通过助学金办公室参与的情况下这么做的。”

Abby Lockhart-Calpito, 19, a rising sophomore, whose family has struggled with homelessness for much of her life, said she is worried that $5,000 won’t be enough to cover food and housing needs for the entire semester, especially without the on-campus jobs she had while living in the dorms; work is hard to find in the middle of a pandemic.

19岁的阿比·洛克哈特-凯尔皮托(Abby Lockhart-Calpito)即将升读大二,在她一生中大部分时间,她的家人都在努力应对无家可归的问题。她说,她很担心5000美元不足以支撑一整个学期的食宿需求,尤其是在失去了她住在宿舍时的在校工作的情况下,疫情期间很难找到工作。

“I know that a majority of Harvard students have places to call home and comfortable spaces in which to do their work in, but that’s not the case for me and many others,” Lockhart-Calpito wrote in an email.

“我知道多数哈佛学生有可称为家的地方和舒适的学习场所,但对我和其他许多人来说却不是这样的,”洛克哈特-凯尔皮托在一封电邮中写道。

Hana Kiros, 20, a rising junior, said the $5,000 amount feels arbitrary — not correlated with the real cost of living for students and their families. “What could be a lifeline for students on full financial aid could be pocket change for students that barely make the financial aid cutoff,” she said.

20岁的汉娜·基洛斯(Hana Kiros)即将升入大三,她说5000美元的金额显得很随意——这与学生及其家庭的实际生活成本并无关系。“这笔钱对于全靠经济援助的学生来说可能是救命稻草,但对于勉强达到经济援助门槛的学生来说,却可能只是一笔小钱。”

In response to Harvard’s announcements, some students said they are searching for cheap housing in the Midwest. Some are exploring a gap year. Some fear they will need to drop out of college completely. Many are organizing against what they perceive as the school’s lack of consideration for their basic needs.

针对哈佛的声明,一些学生说它们正在中西部地区寻找便宜的住房。有些人想寻求间隔年。有些人担心他们可能必须要彻底退学。许多人认为学校没有考虑他们的基本需求,因此在组织抗议。

“At Harvard, being in the dorms was a luxury,” Lockhart-Calpito wrote. “Now that I have to worry about my housing for the next year, I have been grappling with a lot of emotions.” She said she believes the college must account for the challenges facing first-generation, low-income students (often abbreviated FGLI). “Harvard needs to do better,” she wrote.

“在哈佛大学,住宿舍是一种奢侈,”洛克哈特-卡尔皮托写道。“现在我不得不担心明年住宿的问题,我一直在与各种情绪作斗争。”她说,她认为学校必须解决第一代低收入学生(通常缩写为FGLI)面临的难题。“哈佛需要做得更好,”她写道。

An Elite Education

精英教育

Harvard, founded in 1636, is the oldest university in the United States and in terms of the size of its endowment, the richest. It first adopted a significant financial aid program in 1934, and was early to shift to need-blind admission, meaning that students were accepted regardless of their financial circumstances.

哈佛成立于1636年,是美国历史最悠久的大学,就其捐赠基金的规模而言,也是美国最富有的大学。它于1934年首次采用了一项重要的经济援助计划,并较早地转向了不考虑经济条件的招生方式,即不管学生的经济状况如何,都能被录取。

In 2004, the school introduced a financial aid initiative that made tuition free for families making less than $40,000 a year. (That number is now $65,000).

2004年,该校推出了一项经济援助计划,对年收入低于4万美元的家庭免收学费。(现在这个数字是6.5万美元。)

Today, the school says that 55% of its students receive need-based scholarships and 20% receive full scholarships. (Full tuition is $49,653.)

如今,该校表示有55%的学生获得了基于需求的奖学金,20%的学生获得了全额奖学金。(全额学费为49653美元。)

“These students are at this point a very integral part of Harvard, how it sees itself, its student body and identity,” said Jerome Karabel, the author of “The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale and Princeton.”

“目前,这些学生已是哈佛不可或缺的一部分,这关乎学校如何看待自己、它的学生群体和身份定位,”《宠儿:哈佛、耶鲁和普林斯顿大学招生秘史》(The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and Exclusion at Harvard, Yale and Princeton)的作者杰罗姆·卡拉贝尔(Jerome Karabel)说。

But some scholars say a fundamental tension remains between the school’s explicit mission in the first centuries of its existence — to reproduce the white gentry by educating its sons — and its stated role now, as a beacon of diversity and democracy where a prestigious education is available to any and all who merit acceptance.

但一些学者说,该校最初几个世纪的明确使命(通过教育白人绅士的儿子来延续这一阶层)与其现在的既定角色(一个多元和民主的灯塔,让所有值得被录取的人都能得到其享有盛誉的教育)之间,仍存在着根本的张力。

These diverse, often vulnerable students often appear in the school’s publicity material. They are held up as proof of Harvard’s egalitarian ethos, in which the very best students are accepted regardless of circumstance or background. But they are more vulnerable in a crisis.

这些背景多元、通常弱势的学生经常出现在学校的宣传材料中。他们被作为哈佛平等主义精神的证明,即无论环境或背景如何,最优秀的学生都能被录取。但在危机中,他们更加脆弱了。

Shortly after the coronavirus first forced students off campus this spring, Nicholas Wyville, a rising senior who lives in a rural Southern town without easy access to internet, told The Harvard Crimson that working remotely accelerates inequality.

今年春天,当冠状病毒第一次迫使学生离开校园后不久,即将升入大四的尼古拉斯·威维尔(Nicholas Wyville)住在偏远的南部小镇,上网很不方便,他告诉《哈佛深红报》(Harvard Crimson),远程学习会加剧不平等。

“The only equalizer at Harvard is the fact that we all live together and have the same accommodation. We live together, we eat the same food, we have the same faculty resources,” Wyville said to The Crimson. “But if you take away campus living and residential life, then you take away that equalizer.”

“在哈佛,唯一的平等就是我们都住在一起,食宿条件是一样的。我们住在一起,吃同样的食物,拥有同样的师资,”威维尔告诉《深红报》。“但如果你拿走校园和住宿生活,就等于拿走了平等。”

The fact that Harvard will continue charging full tuition is evidence to frustrated students that the school believes that the coming year’s education will match the value of growing and learning in a campus community.

哈佛将继续收取全额学费的事实向沮丧的学生表明,它相信接下来一年的教学,能与在校园中成长和学习的价值相匹配。

“Shifting online might not reduce the value of the Harvard College brand, but it does severely diminish, if not fully impede, our ability to make connections,” students said in a petition circulated this week calling on Harvard to provide more support to “low income students, working students and those with difficult home situations.” Dane said that the school had seen the petition but did not say whether it planned to respond.

“转到网上可能不会降低哈佛学院品牌的价值,但它就算没有完全阻碍,至少也是严重削弱了我们建立联系的能力,”学生们在本周流传的一份请愿书中表示,它呼吁哈佛大学向“低收入、工薪阶层和家庭情况困难的学生”提供更多支持。戴恩表示学校已看到这份请愿书,但没有说是否计划做出回应。

Tough Decisions

艰难的决定

Harvard is allowing students to defer their education for one year, so many in the group chats are discussing that possibility as well.

哈佛允许学生推迟一年接受教育,所以群聊里也有很多人讨论这种可能性。

Kiros is one of those weighing the option. “My life has just been blasted open,” she said. But she is also a first-generation American, and her parents “came to this country in part to, you know, give their children a better life,” Kiros said. “To them, a gap year or a gap semester is a pretty foreign concept.”

基洛斯也在考虑这个选项。“我的生活被彻底毁了,”她说。但她还是第一代美国人,她的父母“来到这个国家,你知道,部分是为了给孩子更好的生活”,基洛斯说。“对他们来说,间隔年或间隔学期是一个非常陌生的概念。”

Penelope Alegria, 18, an incoming freshman, is torn between spending her first semester at school and remaining at home in Chicago. She really wants to make new friends and experience the campus. If she does attend in person, however, the school’s stringent social distancing policies will render the semester unrecognizable from traditional freshman year frisbee-on-the-quad archetypes.

18岁的佩内洛普·阿莱格里亚(Penelope Alegria)即将成为大一新生,她正在纠结于第一个学期究竟是在学校度过,还是留在芝加哥的家里。她真的很想结交新朋友,体验校园生活。然而,如果去上学,校方有严格的保持社交距离政策,这个学期肯定不会是那种在校园广场扔飞盘式的典型大一生活。

Alegria noted that the lack of communal spaces will be particularly tough. In information provided to students, Harvard said: “Most facilities such as common rooms, gyms, and large gathering spaces will not be open.”

阿莱格里亚指出,缺少公共空间会让人觉得特别难熬。在向学生提供的信息中,哈佛表示:“大多数设施,如公共休息室、健身房和大型集会场所将不会开放。”

“It really just sucks,” Alegria said. Besides, her parents, who are from Peru, would rather she stay home, and she knows how much they could use the $5,000. “They’re just kind of like, ‘Well, I mean, you’re still going to school, and they could possibly be giving you money to go to school, so, like, I don’t understand why you’re crying,’” she said.

“这真的很糟糕,”阿莱格里亚说。此外,她的父母来自秘鲁,他们宁愿她待在家里,她知道他们有多么需要这5000美元。“他们给人的感觉是,‘我的意思是,你还能上学,而且他们可能还会给你钱让你上学,所以,我不明白你在哭什么,’”她说。

Some students fear that taking a gap year could cause them to lose access to scholarships and housing. Dane said that financial aid would not be revoked for any student in need but that housing was not guaranteed.

一些学生担心间隔年会让他们失去奖学金和住房。戴恩表示,不会取消任何有需要的学生获得的经济资助,但住房不能保证。

“We have given students an opportunity to make informed choices by sharing with them the context by which the university will allow them to return post-leave of absence,” she said. “They need to make an informed choice that is the best for them.”

  “我们给学生做出知情选择的机会,和他们分享了学校允许他们休假后返校的具体情况,”她说。“他们需要做出对自己最有利的知情选择。”

For Rani Shagarabi, 21, there’s no fixing what ails Harvard. The school, he believes, pays lip service to the needs of minorities and poor people while serving its own interests. “It’s the discrepancy between their words and their actions,” he said.

对于21岁的拉尼·沙加拉比(Rani Shagarabi)来说,哈佛的症结是无药可医的。他认为,这所学校口口声声说要满足少数族裔和穷人的需求,却只为自己的利益服务。“他们就是这样言行不一,”他说。

In May, he decided to drop out and stay home in Atlanta rather than return for his senior year, despite his full scholarship.

今年5月,尽管获得了全额奖学金,但他还是决定退学,留在亚特兰大的家中,而不是回来读大四。

来源:好英语网

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