In a lot of unfortunate ways, our school’s second motto, “finis origine pendet,” rings true.
Although we’d like to believe that, 49 years after Brown vs. Board of Education and 93 years after the ratification of the 19th Amendment, success is only based on merit, it’s simply not true. The present and future do, to some degree, hinge on the inequalities of the past.
Meritocracy, while a great ideal, is nothing more than a buzzword.
Just like we want to believe in unicorns or the appearance of bacon everyday in Paresky Commons, we desperately want to think that meritocracy exists at the “academy on a hill” and in society at large. The idea that the playing field may not be level for everyone frustrates us and also implies something upsetting: maybe our own successes are not solely the result of hard work and talent.
Race, sex, social class, pure luck and an infinite number of other uncontrollable factors affect our outcomes, for better or for worse.
This is difficult to swallow, especially for kids who are lauded ad nauseam about how smart and capable they are. How we can do anything. How, out of many qualified applicants, we were chosen. The truth is that, while we’re all qualified to be here, most of us are not the smartest kids in the world—probably not even the country.
That is not to say to that we are inadequate—far from it. Every student at Andover should be extremely proud of their successes, especially my great class of 2013 who have survived the gauntlet (read: Senior Fall). Experiences like these trying four years separate the boys (and girls) from the men (and women), and we should embrace the fact that we have made it this far. But it would be socially irresponsible not to ponder why there will be more students from the town of Andover in that commencement circle than the number of students from Lawrence, and more from Greenwich than Compton.
The issues on our campus are but reflections of problems in the world outside of the Andover Bubble. The fact that out of our current Congress (which consists of 541 members) only 43 are black and only 100 are women isn’t an unrelated issue that cannot breach the confines of our community. Class, race, sex—these traits impact access everywhere.
For the hundreds of students who matriculate in the fall, there is a greater number of similarly intelligent and capable kids who will never even have the opportunity to apply to a place like Andover because of their socioeconomic backgrounds, skin color and gender.
We all deserve to be here, but many of our peers around the world deserve it just as much. Such truths are not meant to lower our self-esteems or belittle our achievements, but to keep us humbled by the simple fact that we are lucky—and some within our pool are still luckier than others. Pure meritocracy is a myth.
Diondra Peck is a four-year Senior from Marrero, LA.
