I normally relate to my education as something that can provide new ways of seeing the world and something that affords me a different relationship to self, but the SIC, and the loans that I’ve taken out in order to cover it, strain that relationship a lot. I’m wracked with anxiety when everyone starts talking about jobs and fellowships because I have to ask myself, ‘Is the study of English, which I truly believe has changed my life and my understanding of the world, worthy of study when I’m literally paying the interest on a private loan every month?’ With policies like the SIC, Yale asserts that I am limited and those limits fall squarely along class and race lines. If Yale want low-income students to study the humanities, contributing new perspectives to the fields, without being confined by debt, they must eliminate the SIC.
Dan Onuoha, any, DC ’21
