Although what FLIP does is admirable, it begs the question: have we not had the first-gen students in the past? I am sure they too were faced with stress of college, work, and life. Why did they not form an organization to "help each other out"? Did they all fail because such an organization hadn't existed? I don't think so. So why is the current generation in need of such an organization? Has the society gone worse over the time, or people not as tough as before?

What is the driving force behind the need to always be identified as someone/thing? Diversity is glorified everywhere, but those who advocate for it seem to also hunker down in their own self-identified groups. Yes, there is diversity, a diversity of such groups, but I double people from different groups interact with each other. Is this real diversity, or an illusion of diversity? At the end of the day, what does diversity even mean? More and more labels that we can place on people so it looks cool on a report?

Finally, this sentence “Why should a low-income student at Columbia have to wear a hand-me-down from another upper-middle-class student?” rubbed me the wrong way. What's wrong with wearing something handed down from someone else? Does it matter where the clothes come from? If anything, knowing that you are now the subject of charity shall give you more drive to fight, so that one day you will be the one offering the charity. Isn't this what the American Dream is all about?

What has happened to this country?