

Lawrenceville graduate and friend of Killing The Breeze Lola Bakare has written a beautiful piece on this subject which we posted on our Facebook page and you can read here.



Fall In Line

Controversy arose at The Lawrenceville School in Princeton, New Jersey this past March when their student body president Maya Peterson posted an Instagram photo of herself disguised as the typical “Lawrenceville boi,” wearing a Yale sweatshirt paired with L.L. Bean boots and a hockey stick.



Peterson added hashtags such as #peakedinhighschool, #romney2016, and #confederate underneath the photo. The photo was meant by Peterson to poke fun at the wealthy, conservative students at Lawrenceville, and it sparked an uproar.



When asked, Peterson said “Yes, I am making a mockery of the right-wing, confederate-flag hanging, openly misogynistic Lawrentians. If that’s a large portion of the school’s male population, then I think the issue is not with my bringing attention to it in a lighthearted way, but rather why no one has brought attention to it before…”



As the first black, female student president of a historically all male, all white institution, Peterson’s election was certainly a testament to the changing times. But once in power, Peterson was the target of criticism, and, while it’s impossible to know what happened behind the scenes, her identity may have played a role.



When Peterson was elected to the student senate, other students asked for the election results to prove that she’d truly won. Apparently, after her election, anonymous students sent in information to the school’s headmaster about Peterson’s personal and social life in an attempt to have her removed from power.



This may lend credence to the feeling that the majority of students at Lawrenceville, a school which costs $53,000 a year to attend, also aren’t exactly equipped to deal with a mockery of their privilege.



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