Stuff: Materiality and Inequality

What happens to your waste when you throw it in a trash can/recycle bin? This series of counter-maps and visualizations are an effort to make visible the mechanisms behind the world’s (and Hamilton’s) waste production and management to the best of our ability based on the available data. These visual aids help us see what happens to our collective trash- as members of the Hamilton Community as well as individuals residing in the United States and the larger global collective.

This semester, we spent time addressing the concept of labor and its impact on the world. We set out to explore how labor impacts life on our own campus, especially in regard to the visibility and invisibility of student labor. We wanted to investigate the reasons why students work on campus. In doing so, we discovered the importance of class in the decisions people make about working while students at Hamilton.

According to FERPA, all higher education institutions are required to provide students all academic records upon their request. As a group, we used our right to sit down and access our admissions files. We compared our applications and can attribute our experiences to variability in access to resources and inequality. How does this process commodify college applicants?

The invisibility and ambiguity of campus policies shapes the experiences of students on campus. We focus on the materiality of policies related to student conduct, the Honor Code, and Title IX. Developing new informational materials can make these policies more accessible to students.

‘Invisible labor’ refers to the often unobserved and unappreciated work that goes on behind the scenes and at obscure hours. Custodial work is often ‘invisible.’ Invisibility is socially constructed through hierarchies, power relations, and social norms, and invisible work is often ignored by the consumer and the employer. We explore the (in)visibility of Facilities Management labor at Hamilton and its relationship to lived experiences.

The median family income for Hamilton students is $208,600. Although many students come from a place of wealth and privledge, there are those that do not. With such a wide array of backgrounds, it is inevitable that socioeconomic status plays a role in the day to day experiences of students at Hamilton. We explored the extent to which students felt their socioeconomic status impacted their social life on campus and the ways in which class differences manifest themselves in social spaces.