Here’s something to remember the nest time someone at Harvard starts talking about economic justice.

Jodi Kantor of the New York Times reports.

Class Is Seen Dividing Harvard Business School

Is class a more divisive issue at Harvard Business School than gender?

As soon as new students arrive, they are expected to write checks of $300 or $400 to their “sections,” the groups with whom they take first-year classes, if they want to participate in social events. In recent years, second-year students have organized a midwinter ski trip that costs over $1,000, while others, including members of “Section X,” a secret society of ultrawealthy students, spend far more on weekend party trips to places like Iceland and Moscow. Tickets to the winter ball, called Holidazzle, have cost $200 or more in recent years.

When Christina Wallace, now the director of the Startup Institute, attended Harvard Business School on a scholarship, she was told by her classmates that she needed to spend more money to fully participate, and that “the difference between a good experience and a great experience is only $20,000.”

“Class was the bigger divide than gender when I was at H.B.S.,” said Ms. Wallace, who graduated in 2010.

In reaction to an article published in The New York Times on Sunday about Harvard Business School’s attempt to improve its atmosphere for women, many students, alumni and readers echoed her comments.

“A pervasive problem,” a member of the class of 2013 wrote on nytimes.com. Another member of the class said that she had borrowed tens of thousands of dollars a year to keep up socially, and that she never invited classmates to her parents’ home nearby because she did not feel it was lavish enough.

Many alumni from decades ago, including Suzy Welch, a former editor of The Harvard Business Review, said they were startled by the culture of spending that was depicted in the article, including the news that one student had lived in a penthouse apartment at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Boston. When Ms. Welch graduated in 1988, money mattered, she said in post on Twitter, “but conspicuous consumption events were rare.”

A reader named Ken H said that the tone at the school in the 1970s was downright egalitarian, and that anyone who “flashed money around” would have earned jeers. “Maybe what has changed isn’t so much H.B.S., but America,” he said.