If Scott Fitzgerald 1917 revisited campus today, how would he respond if challenged to “check your privilege” (On the Campus, June 4)? Admittedly privileged by middle-class standards of the day, he was still an outsider looking in, less fortunate by far than those he envied and made immortal. No doubt he would be flummoxed by the question, as was Tal Fortgang ’17, according to The New York Times of May 3. Should he apologize for his “seven friends and the trees and buildings,” or Fortgang for his European origins? It is an intrusive and aggressive question, undermining the benefits to all of today’s diversity, to which Fitzgerald sadly was never exposed.
If Scott Fitzgerald 1917 revisited campus today, how would he respond if challenged to “check your privilege” (On the Campus, June 4)? Admittedly privileged by middle-class standards of the day, he was still an outsider looking in, less fortunate by far than those he envied and made immortal. No doubt he would be flummoxed by the question, as was Tal Fortgang ’17, according to The New York Times of May 3. Should he apologize for his “seven friends and the trees and buildings,” or Fortgang for his European origins? It is an intrusive and aggressive question, undermining the benefits to all of today’s diversity, to which Fitzgerald sadly was never exposed.