Wouldn't most people be hard pressed to design a competition that didn't give an advantage to those that are well off? It's hard to worry about having the best anything on campus when you're worried about where your next meal will come from.

I graduated from college in 2006, so I still can remember my 1st and 2nd year living in the dorm. It's true, you definitely need money to have a nice room like that. As far as I'm concerned, most of the people in my dorm didn't have a fancy room like THAT in the photo above.

Well Lisa, isn't this college that you teach in is some sort of private liberal arts college for privileged rich yank kids to begin with? Do not say it is not.

This honestly just seems like grasping at straws, especially because I cannot imagine any college student seriously caring about some little photo submission contest (there's not even a prize! The only way to get college students to do something like that is to at least offer free food). And anyway that flyer shows a completely unrealistic dorm room, it looks like it's a Bed Bath & Beyond catalog or something. Carpet? I don't think so. I get the point you're going for, underprivileged students feeling alienated on a privileged campus, but making that argument just based on one flyer really doesn't do the problem justice.

And if you are going to have the "best room on campus" it *is* about creativity and organization, because those rooms are the size of prison cells and buying a bunch of extra crap to put in there is just going to make it cramped and cluttered.

Some people have suggested the picture is itself a joke about wealth or that it was taken from a catalogue. However, it could still be a joke that could backfire by using an image that implies wealth and spending. More to the point there is nothing to imply the image is a joke.

Secondly if the contest was really about creativity, why use such a boring picture to promote it? This room is well appointed but if the competition were about creativity and invention (something open to people virtually regardless of budget, am having visions of foil sculptures) why not use a more creative picture? You could have had the same effect still using a catalogue or magazine pictures by tearing out different items and adding them together in a humourous way.

By any dictionary, "sexism" means the preference of one sex above the other. For an example statement such as "men or more intelligent than women" is a sexist statement.

Does this ad suggest such? Does objectification or sexualisation of women in advertisement suggest such? Does the similar objectification of males in this ad suggest anti-sexism?

This is a little off topic, but I've never seen a dorm room that big, regardless of you have in it. (Especially for one person. I don't see a second bed in there.)

I think this discussion shows that class warfare goes both ways. People on both sides are quick to assume things about the other side. (I say this as someone who is somewhere in the middle of the spectrum.)

I went to a private college on a full ride and ended up leaving because of the huge differences in class between me and the other students. I couldn't do the activities they did and consequentially was left out a lot. I ended up transferring to state school.

That being said I still consider this to be the smallest, most insignificant consequence of classism.

It doesn't matter to me that some kids got allowances from their parents where mine were just happy they could send me care packages.

It matters that I had to work my ass off to get into a school that other kids got to coast by and get into.

To think that the above is insulting to lower class students is in itself kind of elitist thinking. Knowing that I'm one of two high school friends of mine that graduated college because we were lucky enough to get a scholarship is the problem.

Don't worry about hurting a lower class persons feelings. That's just upper class guilt. Worry about leveling the economic playing field. Work for a more progressive tax system and better education funding.

a photo
of a poster
that's pretending to be a corkboard
with a polaroid photo pinned to it.

It's like a kitsch hall of mirrors. Did that weird anyone else out? What about if I take a screenshot of it on this page and print that out?

The poster says the "best" room, and invites pictures of "your awesome room", it says nothing about how this will be measured or what they're looking for.
Isn't equating "best" and "awesome" with expensive and higher-class the class issue here? From my experience (in the UK, which might make a difference), students would be more likely to read into it "has a life-size cardboard cut-out of David Hasselhoff". Not having a great deal of money doesn't mean you can't have a nice room, particularly with the way student's tastes tend to run.
More generally, I'd wonder if there is *any* bonding activity which wouldn't privilege people with money to some extent?

Oh I disagree! A couple of my friends hardly make end meets every month but since they find it important to live in a lovely place they slowly but surely made their rooms absolutely magnificent with THE cheapest furniture, paint etc. You can get gorgeous chairs for an Euro second hand here and I'm sure that's possible in the U.S. as well.

Oh and I'd like to add to my comment that though I have a lot more money than them my place looks like where a hobo would reside. It's all about creativity to me! A true creative person can quite easily make something amazing with very little!

I like that it's a fake polaroid fake-pinned to a fake cork board taped to a door.