This is the first article in a three part series.
Part 2: Holding Old Ties, Wearing New Ones
Part 3: Making It Big To Set Things Right

NEW HAVEN, Conn.—Students glimpse it briefly: the cracked sidewalks and Family Dollar, the mural advertising the pawn shop that accepts gold, electronics—what it takes to make it from one week to the next.

This is the scene Bryan C. Barnhill ’08 drove past on his way to The Game. It wasn’t Harvard Square, or even one of Yale’s gothic courtyards, but it wasn’t altogether unfamiliar to him.

Bryan had put on his Harvard-preppy look: white button-up, Harvard sweatshirt, tight jeans. An earring glinted in each ear. He was ready. The football teams would compete in the stadium, this time for the 124th year, but Barnhill had his own game to play, and he knew the rules.

Barnhill parked the U-Haul at the tailgate. A DJ began spinning tunes, and the beat pulsed through the morning. Over it floated a languid refrain, “You don’t know me...you don’t know me.”

Harvard had schooled Barnhill in a style, a manner, a way of life.

Like a growing number of Harvard students, Barnhill grew up outside this realm of privilege and struggled to adjust to its demands. But he also worries Harvard’s culture of privilege might tempt him to turn his back on those left at home.

TAKING INITIATIVE

Today, Harvard takes in more low and middle income students than ever before, according to Sally C. Donahue, the College’s director of financial aid. As Harvard becomes more economically diverse, more students find themselves in Barnhill’s situation.

During his sophomore year, the College launched the Harvard Financial Aid Initiative (HFAI), which now promises that parents who make less than $60,000 do not have to pay a cent for their children’s educations.

This year, one of every four freshmen come from families who make $80,000 or less a year, Donahue says.

And one of every 10 students across campus comes from a family making less than $40,000 a year, according to the financial aid office’s Web site. That’s not far from the country’s median family income, a little over $48,000 last year.

HFAI, Donahue says, tries to attract more low-income students to Harvard as “a conscious effort to close the widening gap in opportunity in this country—and actually —between those students who grow up with resources and those who don’t.”

‘MY BLOCK’

Growing up in the East Side of Detroit—regularly ranked among America’s most dangerous cities—Barnhill knew which houses to avoid: the abandoned building next door, the house down the block where the crack addicts gathered to buy drugs. Many windows on the street were shattered.

His neighbors and family members worried about finding jobs. The threat of violence hung over the neighborhood: sometimes, Barnhill fell asleep to the patter of gunshots. A liquor store beckoned from every corner.

“For the longest time,” Barnhill says, “I thought the entire world looked like my block.”

Barnhill came to Harvard wearing his usual outfit—a do rag and baggy jeans.

“My parents told me, you shouldn’t do that, you shouldn’t wear these things, and I say, ‘No, I’m from Detroit, I’m going to show these kids who I am and where I’m from.’”

Barnhill was the first in his family to win admission to an Ivy League school.

“I was going to Harvard for so many other people,” he says. “People in my family, people in my neighborhood, people in my city, people of my race.”

Barnhill says he expected the other students to wear pocket protectors. He wasn’t prepared for Ralph Lauren and J. Crew.

Harvard provided little official guidance for the drastic transition Barnhill had to make his freshman year.

“I really feel like I didn’t get much support here,” Barnhill says.

DISORIENTATION

Harvard financial aid officials say they know students may need guidance, but they worry about making assumptions based on student backgrounds.

“We’ve wrestled [with] this,” Donahue said. “We really don’t want to separate out students who come from less sophisticated economic backgrounds.”

Harvard’s philosophy, Donahue says, has always been to bring a wide variety of students to Harvard—then treat them all the same.

Other schools take a different tack. Across town at MIT, students from disadvantaged backgrounds are invited to an orientation program to ease their academic transition.

Interphase, MIT’s orientation program, brings together about 70 students the summer before freshman year for a head start on physics, writing, and calculus, says Karina I. Vielma, the dean of MIT’s Office of Minority Education.

The program, which pairs the students with upperclass mentors and this summer ferried students to Martha’s Vineyard, is free.

During HFAI’s implementation, Mueller says, there were plans for a mentorship program, but it fizzled out because of a lack of student interest.

Students like Barnhill have access to an e-mail newsletter, a seminar called “Financial Aid 101,” and a booklet called “Shoestring Strategies for Life @ Harvard: A guide for students on a budget.” But little official support exists to ease the cultural transition.

And while Barnhill found a community within the Black Men’s Forum, many BMF members were as privileged as their white peers.

One exception was Brandon M. Terry ’05, a former BMF president who had come to Harvard from urban Baltimore.

Black freshman from tough neighborhoods face two dangers, Terry says.

“One, that you come and completely flip out, because you can’t stand it,” he says. “And then there’s another, where you come in and forget your whole past, and then you fail as the person you could have been.”

By November of freshman year, Barnhill had had enough. Sick of feeling like a guest in some other world, he sat on the steps of Widener and told himself “These are your trees. These are your buildings.”

He could represent Detroit, he decided, in a collared shirt.

—Staff writer Lois E. Beckett can be reached at lbeckett@fas.harvard.edu.