It costs a bundle to attend Pitzer College, an elite liberal-arts institution in Claremont, California, that used to be a women’s college and still skews female (57 percent of its 1,000 or so students). Tuition and fees alone are $48,670 a year, and when you throw in room and board, the price jumps to $65,880.
So it was surprising to read that Pitzer actually houses an “oppressed group” of women students—how oppressed can you be at a $66,000-a-year college that’s consistently near the top in the U.S. News ratings? The “oppressed group,” apparently all Latinas, is complaining that a “privileged group” of women students, that is to say, whites, have committed the sin of “cultural appropriation” by wearing—get this—hoop earrings. (The phrases “oppressed group” and “privileged group” come from an Inside Higher Education article) about the appropriated hoops.
