And for those of us whose path to Harvard felt nearly impossible, raising hell is risky. We’ve seen the way the world marginalizes our families, our communities, and our peers. And now that we have the opportunity for success, we’re not going to throw it away. We’re not going to risk being handled with racialized violence by police. Or risk press coverage that might lose us a job. Or stand, hyper-visible, in front of an onslaught of our drunk peers.

Often, it’s not that we’re risk-averse—it’s that we’re grateful. Harvard has changed our lives and the lives of our families. That’s an amazing, wonderful, awe-inspiring fact.

We don’t want to bite the hand that feeds us.

In the past four years, I have received over $120,000 in scholarship aid from Harvard University. I have received $8,000 in travel grants, $10,000 in on-campus jobs, $4,000 in summer employment from a Harvard-related agency, and an incalculable amount of free food.

$142,000. 142,000 reasons to be grateful. 142,000 toes not to step on. 142,000 reasons to follow the rules.

Sometimes, those $142,000 choke me.

It’s funny. The better I do here—the more confident I feel, the more my work is recognized—the scarier public dissent becomes. I worry I’ll lose what progress I have made, what honors I have accrued. I worry my home will reject me.

The better we do and the more successful we are, the bigger a stake we have in the world as it is.

But that also creates a bigger responsibility to imagine the world as it might be. To challenge the structures, the systems, the institutions that harm humans. To build better ones.

Harvard has invested $142,000 in my education. That’s a $142,000 wager that I have something different, something special, something wonderful to offer the world.

Whether or not you’re on financial aid, Harvard has made a similar bet on you.

And we’re not going to make good on that bet as long as we are too timid to act on our convictions. In ways that are unexpected. In ways that are unruly. In ways that piss people off.

Act even when that means challenging the institution that bet on us in the first place.

Bite the hand that feeds you.

Bite it with anger. Bite it with weird erotic undertones. But most of all, bite it with love.