As March turns into April on Sarah Lawrence College’s snow-covered campus, there is an air of idyllic calm to the students curled up on beanbags in the library and tossing snowballs across Kimble Avenue.

Each day, professors assign innumerable pages of reading, administrators chastise shivering students for smoking too close to buildings, and faculty bring their children to play on the campus swing set. Although snow boots and pashminas have replaced flip-flops and sundresses, studnt life goes on just as it did when I arrived on campus in September.

And yet, beneath the calm exterior, students at the most expensive college in the nation share worries over the economy. In one class, my professor prompted a chorus of bitter laughter by commenting “people think that being linked to the US equates economic security,” and in another, the professor allowed students to leave early to go speak to the financial aid office after they sent out an e-mail advising students that their aid package might have changed.

Devin Ash, a freshman studying political science at Drake University, admitted that while she knew of the economic situation by the middle of last fall, she wasn’t “particularly alarmed because I wasn’t directly affected.” She said that has changed a lot in the past few months, and noted that increased news coverage of the economy has given people “a better grasp on what the numbers mean.” Likewise, Jeff DuVilla, a freshman engineering student at Rutgers University in New Jersey said news about the economy is “almost impossible to avoid,” and Aaron Dornbrand-Lo, a senior economics major at the University of Pennsylvania admitted he “compulsively” checks stock prices on his cell phone while sitting in class.

All three students expressed dismay at the state of Wall Street. Dornbrand-Lo, perhaps, put it most bluntly as he paraphrased an intern friend as saying “We’re f—-d. Every week I get an email saying that so-and-so, head of healthcare investment banking or whatever is leaving. Something is very wrong.” He also admitted, “It’s pretty disconcerting trying to get a job in finance when the top investment banks are collapsing.”

Dornbrand-Lo, as a business student, speaks about economics with friends in a different manner than Ash and DuVilla.   As Ash pointed out, “people in financial majors are a lot more open to talking about money situations.” Dornbrand-Lo recalled, “my friends and I spent a decent amount of time arguing on Google Chat and via text messaging about what we thought would happen,” and that “everyone realizes that there’s no shame in not having a job or high salary right now,” and as a result are less ashamed in disclosing financial situations.

Ash and DuVilla, however, are more reserved when talking about such a sticky subject. Money, Ash said, is a sensitive issue. “If it’s talked about, it’s generalized. Otherwise, it’s a ‘swept under the rug’ kind of subject.” Similarly, DuVilla said that when it comes to personal finances, “mum’s the word,” and that he and his friends discuss the economy in the abstract, sticking to sweeping statements about “the state of things” rather than going into personal monetary issues.

Across the country, financial aid offices are scrambling to make ends meet, trying to find scholarships to bring students in while fumbling with evaporating endowments and current students with no way to pay next semester’s bills.

Outside of administration buildings, the worry is less obvious, but nevertheless remains lurking under the surface of academia. Students may be more reserved in speaking out about their worries than businessmen and politicians, who fill conversation with stock losses and layoff horror stores, but their problems are the same, and equally important.

Tools like online banking, websites like Mint.com (a free online budget planner) and the Wall Street Journal have made it easier for students to keep afloat of the economic situation, and they are ready to take heed, even if they don’t write about it on Twitter. 

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