While college administrators savor platinum perks and fraternity parties are targeted by diversity police, Princeton University sophomore Lea Trusty discusses an overlooked minority on campus: Low income students.

….You can imagine my surprise and panic when I was slapped with an $800 due expected by the end of February. I called the financial aid office but was told the most they could do was offer me a loan and attempt to lower the amount if I didn’t meet my student summer savings amount. The next person I contacted was the assistant bookkeeper at Terrace who told me I could pay in three installments, after which I felt much less panicky. Still, what would have happened had I joined a club that did not offer this option?

This is just one example of how low-income students’ experiences at the University are unique in ways other students may not even realize. When I reject a last-minute invite to go to a Kanye concert for “only” $100 or reluctantly split a check evenly among a large group of friends when I pointedly got a cheaper meal than everyone else, the subtext is so subtle that most people from different socioeconomic backgrounds don’t realize it exists. And from here, it is simple for unawareness of experiences of low-income students to translate to unawareness of the presence of low-income students in general.

Ironically, this lower visibility is partially the result of one of the University’s greatest attributes — its amazing financial aid program. Students whose family incomes are lower than $60,000 — already well above the national median income — receive full tuition, room and board covered by the University. The average grant begins to decrease above the $60,000 mark, but it remains fairly generous still. Thus, the University does as much as possible to ensure that students are on financially equal footing in paying for their college education.

But I find that much of university support for low-income and first-generation students stops with its widely lauded financial aid program. Once the tuition bill is paid in full, it is tempting to say our financial differences are then null and abandon the discussion all together. But receiving money for college does not mean the end of being low-income, and neither should it mean the end of acknowledgement of this status. However, discussing what it means to be low-income is generally taboo. This is not to say the University is willfully ignorant. I think it has room for improvement in addressing and discussing diversity in a number of forms. Socioeconomic diversity is simply the least obvious and, as such, the easiest to put on the back burner.