Upstart Trustee José Hernández has challenged the Board of Richard E Rich Academy to loan out their second, third and fourth homes to the families of students on financial aid over school breaks, arguing vacation homes should be part of financial aid.
Elected to the Board in 2019 solely for the purpose of giving the appearance of diversity in the Annual Report, Hernández has unexpectedly taken over all operations of the hide-bound, secretive, tech-illiterate dynastic group.
As a former scholarship student, Hernández has first-hand knowledge of how the “privileged poor” in predominantly white institutions are marginalized and excluded from the inner life of the school. In particular, Hernández pointed out to the Board that rich students cement their ties and form life-long networks while visiting each other’s fancy houses and taking expensive vacations together.
Prep schools that recruit students from poor backgrounds give little thought to the relationship between the recruit and his or her family back home. The student often has to choose between their new life and their home ties and can feel alienated from both. Providing students with expensive vacations can make this divide worse.
When a senior Board member said that he expected “deserving” students to be invited on such vacations by “generous” families and that such ties had to develop naturally, Hernández challenged him with his Beach House Borrow plan.
Hernández began by offering his own three vacation homes for disadvantaged students to share with their families and a few friends over break, and further offered to pay for airfares and to offset parents’ lost wages.
Although Hernández counts vacations on Martha’s Vineyard with his Richard E Rich roommate Chuck Cabot as among the happiest days of his life, he also sacrificed a lot to take that ferry. While on the Vineyard, Hernández’s girlfriend back home broke up with him and he missed his uncle’s funeral.
The former Chair of the Board objected that beach house shares were traditionally offered up as auction items at the Annual Gala at the Ritz Carlton, and that the Gala benefited the Financial Aid Fund. “Why should students expect a handout when they are already being given a leg up?”
To this Hernández replied, via a slideshow share, that the Gala did not achieve a net gain when the subsidized travel, hotel rooms and per diems of the Trustees to the gala, and the $150K salary of the Development Director who is the daughter of a Trustee, were taken into account. If anyone is getting a handout from Richard E Rich, it is the Board of Trustees. Since none of the Board members were able to log in to the app to see the spreadsheets in question, the objection was dropped.
After listening to feedback from students in his trial program, Hernández also offered a Canada Goose parka to each incoming student in his test group. Noting that while some schools have tried to ban the ubiquitous $1,500 luxury parkas in an attempt to equalize campuses, that only made parka-wearers angry at scholarship kids when their jackets were confiscated. Hernández argued it is better to see the delightfully warm coats as part of the school uniform (Hernández has three beloved Canada Goose parkas including a custom Arctic Winner’s Circle Deluxe himself).
Hernández finally turned the Board around when he found a Trustee sympathetic to his plan and convinced him to donate a chalet in Vail, a house on Nantucket, and a Florida Key.
The sympathetic Board member, who chose to remain anonymous, privately told Hernández that, although he grew up a preppy insider, he felt that prep school had alienated him from his family as well. His parents had sent him off alone to their various houses over break to be taken care of by staff. “At least now an actual family can enjoy these houses,” he sighed.
**Starred Comments**
Mojo8
It is a crime against the environment that these entrenched preppy plutocrats have so many houses sitting empty. By polluting our air and wasting our resources, the Board members are getting a handout from society.
Baron
The houses do not sit empty. Full staff! That’s actually poorer people getting to live in some great houses. Redistribution of wealth.
Mojo8
Hmmm…staff living basically as serfs accumulating zero generational wealth.
4MyHandle
I actually stayed in one of these Board Beach Borrow houses and it was surprisingly shabby. No staff on hand! Mold and mice in the linen closet, tho linen closet was HUGE. But overall 4 stars. How about, a better idea, it’s a swap and the Board comes and stays in the students’ houses…I mean tiny apartments?
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