In November, the Greater Princeton Branch of AYLUS (GPA) collaborated with many other branches for the newest edition of newspapers to promote youth volunteerism. Editors across the country worked together to have this newsletter published on a monthly basis. Besides the AYLUS announcement, the two-page newsletter covers unique volunteering activities at nationwide branches. We expect this monthly newsletter to help improve communication among AYLUS members nationwide and advocate for the concept of community service wherever it applies.
Editor-in-Chief: Lana Cheng (11/1, 3 hrs; 11/11, 3 hrs; 11/13, 3 hrs)
Advisor: Cassie Wang (11/1, 3 hrs; 11/11, 3 hrs; 11/14, 3 hrs)
Deputy Editor-in-Chief: Catherine Feng (Art: 11/13, 3 hrs), Kathie Wang (11/6, 3 hrs), Brenna Li (11/6, 3 hrs)
Art Editors: Daniel Feng (11/12, 2 hrs), Danica Xiong (11/12, 4 hrs)
Article Editors (11/1, 2 hrs for all): Alyssa Jin, Amy Wu, Brigitte Shi, Catherine Harman, Claire Tang, Emma Liu, Gina Shen, Jerry Chen, Luna Chen, Megan Wang, Meiqi Tan, Parker Liu, Sophie Liu, Tom Purui Cui.
AYLUS Times Advisor & National Honorary President Cassie Wang (11/4, 3 hrs; 11/12, 3 hrs; 11/18, 3 hrs, https://illo2023.columbiaspectator.com/) continues volunteering at the Columbia Daily Spectator as the Deputy Senior Illustration Editor.
ARTS AND CULTURE | MEDIA AND POP CULTURE
‘You’re uncultured’: Students reflect on what it means to be cultured
By Cassie Wang / Senior Staff Illustrator
BY TAYLOR GRAHAM
When Bella Williams, BC ’26, started their first year at Columbia, a classmate asked them who their favorite director was. Williams’ answer: Spike Lee. In response, their classmate challenged their love for Spike Lee in a way Williams said felt shaming.
“It was very much like, ‘You’re uncultured,’ and it felt also super racist to me, I feel like there’s also that level of yeah, teach me something. But don’t shame me,” Williams said.
Spectator interviewed 10 students, including Williams, and one professor of sociology about their experiences with cultural elitism on campus. For many, pressures to be culturally elite help broaden their cultural knowledge, but others said they see the pressure as rooted in privilege.
For years, cultural elitism has been the subject of exploration both through published essays and informal campus discourse. In a 2006 Spectator article titled “It’s Lonely at The Top,” students explored the cultural capital that being “elitist” on campus gave them. In “Uncultured,” a 2021 essay for The Eye by Cathleen Luo, CC ’23, Luo describes being called “uncultured” and analyzes a racial bias behind comments criticizing their cultural lexicon.
Like Williams, Celene Garcia Cervantes, CC ’27, said she encountered challenges by other students about her cultural knowledge. During the New Student Orientation Program, Cervantes said a fellow student referred to a scene in “Mean Girls,” a film Cervantes had not seen. “I asked, ‘Can you explain [the reference]?’ And they said, ‘What do you mean? You’ve never watched ‘Mean Girls’ before?’” Cervantes said.
Cervantes ascribed her unfamiliarity with the cult classic to her Mexican heritage and lack of connection with American films. After learning about the film, Cervantes, too, questioned how she had not previously heard of the film but was glad to have learned something new.
Like Cervantes, Alexis Hernandez Lopez, CC ’27, did not grow up watching American films. In moments when Lopez finds himself unacquainted with the media and pop culture around him, Lopez said he blames his lack of exposure on being from a small town in Wyoming.
“It tends to work pretty well because people are like, ‘Oh, Wyoming’s in the middle of nowhere,’” Lopez said.
Laura Kaplan, BC ’26, responds jokingly to these situations, and so far, being perceived as uninteresting has not caused her concern.
“I don’t really feel the need to prove that my interests are interesting enough,” Kaplan said. “I’ve been lucky in my classes where I don’t feel cast aside for not being super informed about these things that are deemed classic,” she added.
For Casey Lam, CC ’26, however, the pressure to have sophisticated tastes has become part of his college experience.
Even with that pressure, though, he said he views these situations as opportunities to acquire new knowledge, since his definition of “cultured” refers to having a curiosity about different parts of the world.
“Everyone studies such different things here. Everyone has these niche interests. So you’re not going to know everything. I don’t know everything,” Lam said. “You say, ‘Oh, that’s interesting. I’ll definitely have to check it out.’ Things like that. That’s how I approach it.”
For Malin Nystrom, BC ’25, there is no one right way to define “cultured.” To Nystrom, Columbia students are often a bit too focused on curating refined tastes, and in turn, judge their peers who do not.
“I feel people will get to the point where if someone doesn’t know some of the same things or isn’t even interested in the same thing as someone else, they will put judgment onto that person,” Nystrom said.
Like Lam, Nystrom said she observed that having niche favorites is heightened at Columbia because it is an Ivy League school and in New York City, both of which add to the pressure to be unique among the crowd.
“There’s such a huge population here where people are so creative, so artistic, and I think a lot of New York is an individual competition to be someone who is their own person,” Nystrom said.
Udonne Eke-Okoro, BC ’25, said they feel there is especially more pressure to be “cultured” in student clubs and organizations.
“I’m a part of a literary society on campus, and so, there is a certain expectation almost to have a more unique sense of taste in terms of what literature you’re consuming,” Eke-Okoro said.
When Eke-Okoro’s cultural knowledge is questioned, they respond with a list of follow-ups.
“I honestly question people. I’m like, ‘Hey, can you tell me about [this]? What do I have to know? What is there to know? Tell me,’” Eke-Okoro said. “I usually just ask people; I’m very upfront.”
To Eke-Okoro, being well-cultured can be dependent on accessibility. And, they said, specific groups can benefit from others’ lack of access.
“The way that Black culture came to be was through a lack of access, and so, having access to Black culture when you yourself are not Black, I think, is definitely a point of privilege,” Eke-Okoro said.
Gillian Gualtieri-Miller, a term assistant professor of sociology at Barnard, referenced French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu’s book, “Distinction” for insight on how cultural elitism forms and said that more niche, obscure tastes receive higher regard than mainstreams one because fewer people have access to them.
“He says that taste is really connected to class status and that those with the highest class status are those with the ‘best taste.’ And they cultivate what is meaningful and desirable based on what is less accessible, but access is really changing in a digital age,” Gualtieri-Miller said.
Gualtieri-Miller defined culture as the norms, values, and ideas people consume, all of which shape how they understand the world. While geography once limited cultural exposure, Gualtieri-Miller said there is a shift in cultural access brought about by the digital age.
“I can be sitting at my parents’ house in Columbus, Ohio, and open up Instagram, and as long as I know some sort of hashtag that I’m interested in or a gallery or I have friends who are connected to things and reposting things, I can see and consume a lot of this niche content without having to overcome those previous barriers to access,” Gualtieri-Miller said.
However, Gualtieri-Miller explained that limitations remain to what media people do and do not have access to as well as what they are and are not familiar with.
“There are ways to educate yourself or gain access to information, but there are still some barriers. And also, where we come from, who we are, who our parents are, that fundamentally shapes our kind of foundational taste,” Gualtieri-Miller said.
Though Columbia students report feeling pressured to be interesting, Gualtieri-Miller does not think being culturally refined should be students’ top priority. Instead, she encouraged them to be “culturally omnivorous.”
“They should consume everything. They should think critically about everything. And they should also, especially at this school, where stress culture is such a big thing, I think you should pause and take some time to have pleasure and enjoy things on a simple level,” Gualtieri-Miller said. “So yeah, take things seriously, but also be a human. Watch TV. Watch YouTube. Scroll TikTok. Take a nap. Eat a burger. It’s all going to be okay.”
Staff writer Taylor Graham can be contacted at taylor.graham@columbiaspectator.com. Follow her on Twitter @taylorxgraham.