Owen Kidd

Honors Scholars are the members of Tulane’s incoming freshman classes who have been “intellectual leaders and innovators in their high schools” and who project to be “tenacious in their pursuit of learning and in taking their place on Tulane’s campus as provocative thought leaders.” 

Everybody wants to be an Honors Scholar, but students are forbidden from applying lest we common folk get too uppity. Instead, the admissions office simply informs the scholars of this distinction in their letter of acceptance. With the caste thusly established, Scholars go on to form their own special society on campus, sustained by their own special classes and, until recently, special housing in Wall Residential College. 

In the past few years, the peasantry began to clamor about the inequality of this housing arrangement, and the school obliged. Now Tulane’s brightest minds are scattered among the mustiness of Monroe, Sharp and Butler, condemned to share dorm rooms and showers with the masses.  

I, by some perversion, landed in Wall, despite eking my way off the waitlist in mid-July. I feel like a dog sleeping in his owner’s bed while the owner sleeps in the doghouse; it is simply wrong. Unlike my jealous counterparts, I recognize my own inferiority. The school must restore our campus aristocracy to their rightful estate. 

 In my time on campus, I have been blessed to know two Honors Scholars, one from a class and another from my dorm. Since meeting them, I have sought their opinion on all this equality madness.  

 It took weeks to gather the courage to ask them for an interview, and another few weeks, once they reluctantly agreed, to prepare questions I felt were worthy of their prestige.  

 The first interview was with Amanda Bourgeois, a valedictorian hailing from a local high school.  

 “When did you realize you were smarter than other kids?” I asked.  

 “Is that a serious question?” she responded. 

 “Yes.” 

 “I was always told I was smart,” she said. “And I always got straight A’s my entire life. I got tested into ‘Gifted and Talented.’” Noticing my confusion, she said, “Do you know what that is?” 

 “I don’t, but I’m sure it’s very familiar to you,” I answered, acknowledging the intellectual gap between us. 

 “To get into it you need to score in the 99th percentile on your test. The thing about the ‘Gifted and Talented’ program is that your brain must work differently but …” 

 Apologizing for interrupting, I asked her what she meant by that. 

 “Well, my aunt was a ‘Gifted and Talented’ teacher … I personally believe that if she was tested when she was younger… she would be ‘Gifted and Talented’ too … she also taught me for four years.” 

 “So perhaps there’s something hereditary about your intelligence.” 

 “Possibly … and I am religious as well, so I always thought that God gave me the ability to comprehend and learn everything.” 

 Satisfied, I moved on to the real business — the current living arrangements. “Do you find it insulting … to live among intellectual inferiors?” 

 “Not at all,” she said. “I don’t find it insulting.” 

 I was discouraged by her show of humility. She knew herself to have fine brains yet rejected the right to fine living. Notions of this harebrained equality had begun to possess the Scholars themselves. I ended the interview. This was not what I was looking for. 

 My next interview was with Maya Teig, who, being from New York, I hoped would bring the self-righteousness of The Big Apple.  

 I began, as I did the first interview, by asking her when she realized her genius. 

 “Oh, shut up,” she said to my surprise. “I don’t think I am smarter than anybody else.” 

 It can’t be, I remember thinking. Did nobody else at this school recognize the academic caste? 

 “So,” I said, challenging her self-deprecation, “to what do you attribute your placement in the Honors’ Program?” 

 “Luck … Anybody could have been put in. It was random.” 

 “So was the selection random, or did it have something to do with merit?”  No matter what I tried, she maintained this strange equality. I knew, even before I asked, what she would say about the living situation. I ventured anyway. “Do you find it offensive to live in the same space as common beings?” 

 Her answer was so abhorrent I cannot, in good conscience, put it in print. She said, in short, that she not only tolerated living among the peasantry; she preferred it, because it widened her college experience. 

 How far the aristocracy has fallen! Five years ago, an Honors Scholar would have spurned an interview with someone as lowly as me, especially without a fee. Nowadays, our self-doubting chosen ones consider me an equal, worthy of sleeping under the same roof as them. What happened to this once-great institution?