Academic Class Resentment

Published by

Clarissa

November 14, 2016

The hotel in Houston where the conference was held was so chic and expensive that there were phone numbers of male prostitutes in ladies’ bathrooms.

I don’t get this weird fashion of holding academic conferences in very expensive hotels. Everybody spends the entire conference blabbing about social justice while the association’s leadership luxuriates in the expensive hotel and the plebs has to spend money on taxis to schlep oneself and all of one’s stuff from a cheap hotel on the outskirts every day.

I’ll never forget that shameful MLA that was held on Nob Hill in SF. Most of the attendees were piss-poor grad students who couldn’t even afford to have a snack at that place. And the chair of my department was all, “Oh, you are not staying here?” when it was clear I could barely afford the taxi fare to get to that hotel.

Rate this:

9 responses to “Academic Class Resentment ”

TomW

November 14, 2016

This is one of the things I really hate about the MLA, it’s always in very expensive hotels in expensive cities. And it’s the people at the very bottom who have absolutely no choice about attending.

The justification is that there are only a few cities with enough hotels and conference space, but if you ever look at where business groups hold big meetings, you notice that quite a few of those happen in Las Vegas and Orlando, two places with a huge range of hotel options, huge convention centers, and lots of relatively inexpensive flights from all over the country. To my knowledge the MLA has never met in either location. I’m sure they consider them too plebeian because people actually go to those places to have fun.

LikeLike

Reply
1. Clarissa
  
  November 14, 2016
  
  St louis could be an option. It’s cheap.
  
  LikeLike
  
  Reply
  1. TomW
    
    November 14, 2016
    
    Absolutely. There are lots of places that could work and be less expensive if being less expensive was anywhere on the list of priorities of the people in charge.
    
    LikeLiked by 1 person
    
    Reply
  2. Z
    
    November 14, 2016
    
    I am told it keeps being suggested and then keeps being voted down, allegedly because too many members say they refuse to go there. I don’t know what members those are as I have never been asked.
    
    LikeLike
    
    Reply
Anne

November 14, 2016

As a sociologist, I find this terribly ironic and depressing. I come from a working class Latino background and when my colleagues act shocked that my family could not afford to travel growing up and that my first conference was one of my first times traveling in an airplane, that I couldn’t afford to visit my grad school for a campus tour before Day 1 as a grad student, that I could not always afford to travel home for the holidays, that I could never afford to stay at the luxury hotels where ASA is hosted (and that I’ve never been inside luxury hotels like this prior to attending conferences like ASA), I am frankly shocked. These are people who have built a career around talking about things like “privilege”, and this is stuff I have been asked constantly by them, like they literally can’t wrap their minds around a life outside of this bubble where it makes total sense to host conferences dedicated to things like “critical, postcolonial, intersectional feminist theory, etc.” in opulent luxury hotels in expensive cities. This exact dynamic had me worried Trump was inevitable for a while (in saying this, I think the “poor downtrodden whites who have not been heard” narrative is infuriating bullshit, so I do not mean to suggest that in saying this).

LikeLike

Reply
1. Clarissa
  
  November 14, 2016
  
  Exactly. I loved it when my passionately Marxist colleagues back in grad school would ask, “You aren’t going to travel in the summer? Why? You don’t like traveling?” The degree of cluelessness was stunning.
  
  LikeLike
  
  Reply
xykademiqz

November 14, 2016

I am with you all the way. In my field, a number of large conferences are either in ridiculously expensive cities (SF) or in these remote locales that take a ton of time and money to get to, but are not cheap once you do (e.g., a ski resort in Colorado). It drives me ballistic. If I have to drop $160/night plus $600-800 for registration plus $500 for a flight plus however much to get from airport to hotel or commute to the conference center, it’s well over $2000 before you have a chance to say “Holy fuckin’ conference expenditures!”

LikeLike

Reply
Ol.

November 14, 2016

Oh yes. Preparing interviews in a cheap hotel room in Tenderloin. Great times.

LikeLike

Reply
anon

November 15, 2016

We have the same problem in my field too. The problem is that they need a big enough conference venue in a city with cheap hotel and dining options within walking distance. Recently they’ve been going with a chain of resort/conference centers, and while they’re technically in cheaper areas, they’re completely isolated from everything else. So you have to stay in the expensive conference hotel and have to eat at the expensive resort restaurants, which then makes it just as expensive as a nice city. At least my field is really good about subsidizing students at conference in boutique locations.

LikeLike

Reply