PROFILES

Can you give a snapshot of your own experience as a student at Chicago?

My experience started with my admission, because I think the U of C really gave me a second chance. I was a kid who did pretty well in school, but not as well as 95 or 99 percent of the kids who get into the U of C. But they saw something. They saw a kid who hustled his sophomore, junior, and senior years, who worked his butt off during summers to earn some money, took leadership positions, got involved in sports, and tried to do the right thing as much as possible. So I was very fortunate that the U of C let me in, because there were a lot of reasons not to.

Did you feel prepared for your class experience?

My first year, I was definitely not prepared for the academic rigor. Most kids coming here, they learned how to study in high school and that was the thing that I was missing. My first year was about getting the study skills and catching up, and that was an adjustment. But after I got that, I realized, "Well, geez, I can compete here. I can figure this out, and I'm having a lot of fun doing all of this stuff. I'm working really hard." I had a full-time job while I was in school; I was a waiter down at the Hyde Park Hilton, and I'd work forty hours a week.

What was your financial-aid situation?

I got substantial financial aid from the University, substantial grants. I got student loans, and a Pell grant was my first-year financial aid, so that made it possible. I came to school with my first-quarter tuition paid, first-quarter housing paid, and $3000. That was the money I had left after paying the first quarter's tuition and all that kind of stuff, which I saved the previous years. In order to finish the year, I had to earn a lot of money, so that's what I set out doing.

I worked at night, and I went to classes during the day, but I guess I didn't feel all that unique. I had a girlfriend who was in a very similar situation and she worked downtown at the Hard Rock Café, and eventually she got me a job there. That's how I ended up financing most of my college career. You did what you had to do. You just worried about paying off the bills that you needed to pay off in the immediate future, and everything at the end of the day took care of itself. But clearly, without substantial financial help from the University, there's no way I would have been able to do it.

Some people might say that having to work that much while you're attending the University is a reasonable price to pay to receive the benefits of the education and that it builds character.

I think there's no doubt that it does, but it's really scary. And there's a bunch of people who will tell you, “You can't do it.” And for that reason, I think a lot of people don't try. So a lot of people say, "Oh, my God, look at the cost." And the cost of the school is different today. I don't know if I could do it today. But I think most people don't even try, because it's just so scary.

Even the University dissuades someone from working that much.

There’s another point. Different people come to the University with different skill sets and different goals and different challenges, right? I had a whole bunch of confidence in myself, I had experience working and going to school and doing a whole bunch of other stuff—time management skills. And I did have experience being out on my own a bit, so none of that stuff really bothered me.

There are a bunch of kids who come in and maybe they come from a city experience where they can't work at night because they grow up learning that by the time the street lights go on, you better be at home; otherwise you're going to have to be ducking bullets. And I didn't grow up with that; I grew up in the suburbs, and I grew up working late at night, and so I was more free in my world. And that's not a situation that some kids enjoy. So if you didn't work in high school, it's going to be really difficult for you to work a lot in college.

Second, you have to have a willingness to sacrifice grades going in. There's just no way that, if you want to go to med school, you could work a full-time job. Not possible. You're taking a different course load, and you can't have a tradeoff in grades; you just can't. I sacrificed grades to work that much. Well, that's great—I didn't want to be a doctor. I didn't need to get great grades. I needed to learn as much as I could, and I needed to stick around. If I wanted to be a doctor, that's not good enough. If I wanted to go to Harvard Law School, that's not good enough.

Odyssey Scholarships benefit low- to moderate- income kids that wouldn't normally think that they could attend an institution like this. What benefits do you see to including more students from that sector into the academy?

Well, I think you include a completely different mindset. They have completely different problem-solving skills because they encounter completely different problems. They have a very advanced danger-avoidance thought process. They look at things from a worst-case scenario from the get-go and factor that into how they live their lives.

And the interesting thing is, if you look at what we're going through today, you think, "Well, gee, couldn't people have benefited from looking at the worst-case scenario? Would that have been helpful on Wall Street or in Congress or...?" And the answer is, "Yeah." People just ignore the worst-case scenario, and these are kids who deal with that on a regular basis.

I work with some kids in Chicago, and they’re in school, and they have to walk three blocks from their high school to the football field that they practice on. Well, they know very well that they have to take different routes because there are kids who try to hassle them every day. These are football players, the toughest kids in school, but they don't want to get into a fight. So they figure out ways to avoid getting into fights by taking different routes, by being unpredictable, and by knowing what time practice has to end because they’ve got to get back to school. That's a different mindset.

It's different than most middle-class experiences.

Yeah, and they have a comfort level with that sort of stress. There are lots of people who would say, "Well, do you know what? If I'm going to have to put up with this everyday, I'm just not going to play football. That way, I don't have to go to practice, and I don't have to make that walk." But no, they say, "That's something that I want to do. I'm going to do it, and here are ways that I can avoid possible difficulties."

So you're saying that making the University more inclusive introduces new perspectives?

Well, not just other perspectives—different skill sets. That's sort of the pat answer: "Well, you're going to get different perspectives." That's nice. But when you go to a university, the place that you're going to learn the most is not in the classroom. The place you're going to learn the most is from the other students. Maybe there are only certain things that an inner-city kid can teach others. But those are important things; those are really important things. And it's not just a perspective.

It's practical.

It's a practical skill set; it's a way of thinking; it's a problem-solving approach. I think it's a huge benefit to be able to learn from those kids—how they go about looking at problems, how they go about looking at danger, how they go about looking at opportunities.

How do you think the program impacts the University as an entity?

I think it shows the University has a commitment to being open and inclusive; to being something other than socioeconomically elitist. I think that the University has always seen itself as being a place where the right answer wins, irrespective of who gives the answer. It's been a place of debate, a competitive place. And in order to have that kind of environment, you have to allow the best people in. You have to allow the best people in, no matter what. I think the University was falling short a little bit.

There were a lot of other schools that had gone the extra step because they could—because they had more money, because they were in a different place. And I think this brings the University to a place where they can make a very strong argument that says, "You know what? We're going to have the best people, period. We have a fund of money that is segregated from the rest of the University endowment that is simply to make sure that we can make the University available to whomever wants to come, period.”

It makes the University a much better place. It makes the student body a much richer student body, and I think it opens up the idea of the University to an entirely new group—which, I think, is huge. You now can go to an entirely new group of kids and say, "This is a realistic opportunity for you. You don't have to make a heroic effort, financially, to come here and to stay here. The University is making a heroic effort to get you to come here and stay here.”

Let’s talk about the impact of loan indebtedness. What was your own indebtedness by the time you finished your four years?

I think it was a little south of $30,000.

Did that influence your post-graduate decisions?

Oh, absolutely. I had to make money. You don't have the opportunity to do what you really might want. If I had been in a different situation, I might have taken a couple of years and taught somewhere. While it may have been an option and I may have been able to do it, it was scary enough, and that debt was scary enough, that I said, "No, I've got to start making money from the get-go." And so, yeah, it had a big psychological impact. It definitely limits the options that you consider, and it tilts your decision-making towards those options that are going to bring in money right away.

Do you think that there are eligible students out there whose families simply don’t consider a school if they are required to take out loans?

Not only will the kids not consider it, but the adults that give the kids advice will very much try to get them to go to a safer, less expensive place. To be honest, they don't have faith that when the kids are done, they can make enough money to make it worthwhile.

When someone who has a graduate degree from an Ivy League school tells a kid that he’s got to be willing to take on some debt, because at the end of the day it's going to pay off, that’s a different situation. They have a worldview in which that advice makes sense. It makes sense to take out a bunch of debt to get the best education, because at the end of the day, that's a small price to pay for an increased earnings stream for the next 35 to 40 years of your life. That's not a mindset that people have with kids in the inner city. It's very, very rare. And that limits the schools that they go to. I mean, these kids don't even think about going to private schools. It's not even a thought for the vast majority of them–any private school.