Most Fordham Rose Hill students are familiar with 'the look' you occasionally get when you explain where you go to school. Typically, an interaction for me goes something like this:

Some acquaintance, neighbor, extended family member, etc.: So where are you going to school?

Me: Oh, Fordham! It's in New York.

Said acquaintance: Like New York, New York, the city? Or is it upstate?

Me: The city! It's in the Bronx, actually!

Cue "the look."

"The Bronx?" they'll typically say in a careful tone, saying a lot about their opinion of it without actually using the words. And then I'll have to play defense for an entire borough, defending both my college decision and a fifth of New York City against someone who, more often than not, has never stepped foot in the Bronx.

The Bronx gets a bad rep and so I can on some level understand people who live far away from it to have a skewed perception. But I figured once I was actually at Fordham people wouldn't be so ignorant.

For the most part, I was right. But there are exceptions.

One of the only day-in-the-life videos I ever watched about Fordham, back when I was still considering schools, showed a couple girls from Rose Hill going down to Manhattan for the day. Laughing to the camera, one said "we made it out of the Bronx!" to which the other chimed in "we finally fit in!"

I think about that video a lot. Frankly, it makes me mad, but it speaks to a very specific culture at Fordham. There's a small sect of people here: usually wealthy, usually accustomed to being in New York, nearly always white, that think they somehow get to live in the Bronx while keeping their distance from it. They act like they're better than the borough they spend their time in, as if it's just an accident they're not in Greenwich Village or Williamsburg.

I cannot STAND these people.

Living in New York is a privilege a lot of people dream about and never get. Recognize the fact that you are lucky to be here, at a beautiful school in a culturally rich and fascinating place. When you make fun of the Bronx or act like you're above living in it, it's disrespectful to the hundreds of commuter students whose families live there. It's unbelievably rude to the people of the borough that is hosting you for four years, and whose streets you seem to have no problem running around on weekends. And that's not even mentioning the not-so-subtle racism that's present here. If you're too good for the Bronx, leave. If not, try exploring the parts of New York that aren't accessible from your family's second home on the Upper West Side. You just might learn something about the city you live in.