Columbia’s Champagne Socialists: How Performative Political Action Impacts Campus Inclusivity

Butler Library. Photo by Scarlet Sappho.

Once, at the New Student Orientation Program (NSOP), someone asked me what income bracket I belonged to. I wish that this anecdote was a fabrication or an embellishment, but sadly it happened within the first twenty minutes of an encounter with another first-year student. 

During my first week on Columbia's campus, I immediately had to reckon with the wealth gap among students. Coming from my middle-class Delaware suburb, I had no way of understanding the scope of inequities that I would continue to encounter at Columbia.

At Columbia, the average median household income is 150 percent higher than the national average. Over half (62 percent in 2017) of the student body comes from the top 20 percent of income earners in the U.S; meanwhile, only 17 percent of students identify as FGLI.

Attending Columbia on full-financial aid is not easy. Apart from juggling multiple jobs with studies and battling financial aid officers for minuscule adjustments in aid packages, peers expect lower-income students to conform to their high standard of living in New York City. As a result, low-income students often feel isolated when attempting to conform with more affluent peers, especially when social events often include expensive city excursions. 

Meanwhile, as a self-identifying “premier liberal arts college,” Columbia College is one of many institutions where liberal politics dominate both academia and the social scene. For instance, Columbia is home to a thriving and robust YDSA (Young Democratic Socialists of America) chapter. Other leftist and liberal organizations can also be found tabling or speaking with students outside the university gates. 

On a broader scale, young people are waking up to realize that many of the problems that plague their generation—enormous student loan debt, unaffordable housing, and an ever-increasing wealth gap—are a direct consequence of American capitalism. Today, Gen Z is the most likely generation to view capitalism unfavorably compared to older groups. Similarly, membership in youth socialist organizations has surged. In the U.S. 2016 presidential election, the furthest left-leaning presidential candidate, Bernie Sanders, won 54 percent of the vote amongst the electorate under 30. After, the Young Democratic Socialists of America’s membership doubled. The Democratic Socialists of America define their view of capitalism as “a system designed by the owning class to exploit the rest of us for their own profit.” 

Due to the large proportion of wealthy young liberals at Columbia, it is no surprise that sometimes the radical leftist sentiment in classrooms and dorm halls comes from affluent students. However, this combination of the most vocal proponents for the working class sometimes being students from the top 1 percent income bracket can feel unnerving, especially for FGLI students. The niche sentiment on Columbia’s campus feels eerily reminiscent of a socio-political trend known as “champagne socialism.” 

“Champagne socialism” was first coined in the 1906 novel Blind Alleys, when George Eggleston portrayed champagne socialists as affluent citizens aspiring for everyone’s standard of living to be raised. They adhere to this moral standard largely for their own social benefit and fail to consider the impracticality of complete economic equality.

Today, some argue that famous liberal and socialist icons like Hasan Piker and Bernie Sanders fall into this camp. Hasan Piker recently purchased a $2.7 million home, and Bernie Sanders is part of the top 1 percent of U.S. income earners despite both being some of socialism’s most staunch supporters. These socialist icons serve as parallels to wealthier Columbia students perpetuating the same sentiment on campus. 

At Columbia, self-identifying liberal or socialist students may gain social capital for their views. Cool kids adorn their dorm walls with “eat the rich” signs and plaster hammer and sickle icons on their Instagram bios. A popular meme account known as @columbiafits posted, “When did the cool kids stop posting Soho House [and] Nobu and instead start posting alleys pretending 2 be poor?” Satirical at its core, the Instagram story raised an important question: do those who benefit so much from the system honestly believe their own anti-capitalist sentiment? Or is this another trend in the age of the influencer, financially beneficial for a select few—similar to how Bernie Sanders profited over $1.7 million in sales from his socialist book series or how Stella McCartney utilized the French Communist Party’s headquarters for her runway show? If so, what are the dangers of posing as a radical leftist in ideology but not in practice? 

Being a “modern champagne socialist” or the Columbia equivalent—a radical leftist trust-fund baby—is not inherently problematic. More affluent members of the Democratic Socialist party stand to further the movement by providing the necessary funds to spread socialist ideology. You do not need to adhere to your political views in every aspect of your life to be considered a socialist. 

Posturing becomes dangerous when the socialist personality trait goes so far that wealthier students pose as a lower socio-economic class to be “authentic” or leave FGLI students out of their activism efforts. Champagne socialists may advocate for leftist reform more broadly while conveniently neglecting issues faced by FGLI students on campus: housing insecurity, food insecurity, and financial aid transparency. Such behavior invalidates the experience of high-need students. 

As a result, the social stratification on campus increases, and inclusivity suffers in an environment where FGLI students already face unequal odds at gaining admission to Columbia in comparison to wealthy peers—a student from the 1 percent is 77 times more likely to gain admission here or to another Ivy League school. Also worth noting, 13 percent of the Columbia student body comes from the top 1 percent of income earners in the U.S. Then, once arriving on campus, FGLI students face significantly more obstacles to achieving an equitable educational experience compared to their financially secure peers. The oversight of Columbia's champagne socialists plays into the detrimental class divide on campus—in 2016, over 12 percent of Columbia’s students identified as “full-need,” or students who do not have to pay anything towards tuition.

Columbia prides itself on gifting students with “essential skills to engage in an increasingly diverse and rapidly changing world.” The over one-hundred-year-old Core Curriculum is the medium through which students are expected to acquire this skill set. All students, regardless of major, are required to take a wide range of literature, philosophy, history, politics, art, music, science, and writing courses. The year-long sophomore seminar Contemporary Civilization primes students on various political, moral, and social issues to “prepare students to become active and informed citizens.” Yet, sometimes students also use their highly educated position of privilege, quoting the Contemporary Civilization texts like the Communist Manifesto by Karl Marx or The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon, to support their radical leftist positions. A student leader in the FGLI community, Jaine Archambeau, CC ‘22, echoes this sentiment. As a senior, she recounts years of her peers “mansplaining oppression to [her] and other FGLI students,” or “justifying themselves by having read the works of Foucault, Fanon, or Marx.”  Wealthy students may reference these liberal revolutionary texts as evidence for understanding aspects of economic oppression and societal limitation that they have never experienced. 

The presence of champagne socialists carries significant weight when Columbia routinely churns out national and international political leaders and endows students with the knowledge to become them. As an institution, Columbia boasts over thirty-four presidents and prime ministers as well as five founding fathers as alumni. Additionally, Columbia has educated over eighty-four Nobel prize laureates and one hundred Pulitzer prize winners. 

The implications for creating a diverse and equitable political campus culture lend themselves directly to the work that Columbia students will do on campus and post-graduation. Columbia students hold a legacy of engaging in liberal advocacy, such as in 1968 when students shut down campus in protest of the university’s involvement with the Vietnam War and encroachment into Harlem. However, as a student radio anchor during the protests, George Siegel, later questioned why  Harlem residents hadn’t started rioting in sympathy with Columbia students opposed to the gym in their park and a war that their sons would likely not be able to stay out of. Today, Columbia’s champagne socialists may similarly try to lead leftist political movements, assuming they know what's best for the general working class because they are affluent and highly educated. This may exacerbate the systemic lack of working-class people involved in U.S. politics: less than 10 percent of elected officials come from low or middle-class backgrounds. Preferring performative political action, champagne socialists have the potential to thwart true socio-economic revolution. Given that Columbia remains committed to admitting a more socioeconomically diverse student body because a “broad representation of perspectives…is critical,'' they should also prioritize fostering an inclusive political culture for all students.

Emily Chmiel is a staff writer at CPR potentially studying political science and East Asian Languages and Culture. She is originally from Delaware but she might claim to be from New York when outside of the city.