What Princeton can learn from reality television

If television can be considered an authority — and since the average American watches more than a seminar's worth each day, how can it not be — then the country is deep in one of the most spastic fits of its love/hate relationship with the rich. A parade of fall shows, including MTV's "Rich Girls," HBO's "Born Rich," and, quintessentially, FOX's "The Simple Life," all reinforce what F. Scott Fitzgerald noted long ago, that the rich are different — horribly, horribly different.

For many Princeton students, television is the Radio Free Europe that connects us to the world beyond the bubble, streaming news and entertainment through the Gothic Curtain. But unlike the Voice of America, what we see on today's network is amusing but rarely cause for aspiration.

Of course we laugh when FOX transports hotel-heiress/do-it-yourself porn-star Paris Hilton and friend Nicole Richie (as in Lionel) from Beverly Hills to rural Arkansas, a world where ticks are more likely than mints to appear on one's pillow and Wal-Mart is the place to see-and-be-seen. But good fun aside, this inverted "Beverly Hillbillies" strikes an uncomfortable chord at Princeton, where the difficulties of cross-tax bracket exchange are one of the touchiest, and thus least discussed, aspects of social life.

As might be expected of a school that balances an aristocratic past with enormously generous financial aid, economic contrasts at Princeton are stark. There are few places in the world where the trust-fund baby and the local-kid-done-good must share a 16' by 12' room.

However, this reality is diligently papered over by a student body that self-consciously aims for that unproblematic median: the midto uppermiddle class. Unlike the networks' socialites-turned-starlets, Princeton students with privilege rarely flaunt it. Even the showing-off associated with the more status-aware eating clubs and organizations is studiously subtle. In a political environment where "class warfare" — and I don't mean Cane Spree — is considered an insult, the unapologetic economic inequality of this season's programming tempts us like forbidden fruit.

Or does it? Perhaps Princeton students are not embarrassed by economic status, but merely consider it irrelevant. After all, once we step through FritzRandolph Gate the vast majority of us (sorry, philosophy majors) will start earning a return on the education that cost us so dearly. By the time of the 50th, if not the 5th reunion, the number of zeros added to everyone's incomes is likely to make the remaining economic differences largely immaterial.

But even if this interpretation is true, Princetonians have generated a robust supply of alternative status-symbols to care about even as we pretend not to. For example, grades. Most of us try to appear nonchalant in our quest for A's. We will depreciate our last paper or bemoan a recent midterm, but almost always add "whatever; at least it's done," or something to that effect. The goal seems to be to manage the stress of academics by downplaying their importance.

Like America's wealth complex, the Princeton grade complex is best understood through its boogiemen, the Paris Hiltons and Nicole Richies of Old Nassau. Listening to Princeton students, one hears them heap scorn on two classes of people. First, we despise those who unabashedly pursue the perfect GPA. Students without 4.0's would rather not be reminded of the fact that some people could do Orgo in their sleep, and those with similar grades — but the discretion not to rub them in their classmates' faces — see these proud grade-grubbers as terribly déclassé (not unlike how Old Money sees New).

At the opposite end of the spectrum, we loathe those classmates who work a lot but pretend not to. This is of course hypocritical, because most of us in fact downplay the amount of work we do. Nonetheless, when someone is "outted" as a hard worker, shame often follows. Over dinner last week it came to light that a friend had written her 80-page JP during a feverishly productive winter break. Conversation ebbed. "I'm so embarrassed," she muttered.

For some, attitudes like these are worryingly anti-intellectual. I would argue, however, that the truth is more complicated. Princeton students hesitate to flaunt their success because they do not want to embarrass classmates who, academically, have less than they do. We de-emphasize grades not because we do not care about them, but just the opposite; because we care about grades so much, we find their unequal distribution socially uncomfortable.

If the television networks wanted to replicate this fall's success in the Ivy League market, all they need do is send a few braggart brainiacs from Princeton to Podunk Community College. As the snotty scholars derided their newfound peers for being pre-nursing, not premed, or for studying auto and not quantum mechanics, those of us back on campus would be sure to laugh at their flagrantly bad behavior and impenitent sense of superiority. As wealth is both taboo and fetish for the country at large, so too is academic success for us — good to have, bad to flaunt. Maybe reality shows are more realistic than we thought; by showing what we love to hate, perhaps they also shed light on what we hate to love.

Tom Hale is a Wilson School major from South Kingston, R.I.