“The only thing wrong with privilege,”
I remember a college professor once saying,
attributing the quote to Virginia Woolf.
“was that not everyone has it.”

I was sitting in an English class
at a small private
liberal arts college
in Ohio.

I had grown up in a college town
not much different than Wooster
so I didn’t even notice
my own privilege.

Instead, I only saw those
with greater privilege than I.

In the news today,
I read about a small private college
in Virginia
that is shutting down.

The plantation,
turned finishing school,
turned liberal arts college,
couldn’t survive
in the twenty-first century.

I imagine the students reading
Virginia Woolf,
longing for five hundred pounds
and a room of their own,
nodding their heads in agreement
with Woolf’s words about privilege.

I imagine the students reading
“Gone with the Wind”
comparing Sweet Briar to Tara
vowing they will never go hungry again.

I imagine the students reading
the Gospel lesson
about the Anointing of Jesus
and nodding in agreement
that it was a very beautiful thing.

I imagine the students reading
John Donne
and knowing that the bell tolls
not just for the closing of Sweet Briar,
but for all of us.