Word: riffraff
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...parallel example in the real world would be an exclusive country club vigorously keeping the riffraff out—in short, a perfect villain for activist crusades outside the Science Center. There’s a difference, though. Country club members have earned their privileges, and they pay annual dues. Adams House residents got lucky in a housing lottery, and they pay the same tuition as everyone else. This tuition then subsidizes their luxurious dining hall. Indeed, Dartboard struggles in vain to think of one way that the racket at Adams, in principle, is less nefarious than the capitalist patriarchies...
...course, it cannot be stated enough that Dartboard is also a “Quincy House resident.” Adamsians take heart: Those of us uncivil enough to talk about dining hall segregation are all part of the riffraff. Just keep flogging that in your defense...
Cairnie, as it turns out, ran a poetry shop that was almost more an elitist club than a bookstore. He had a poorly concealed disdain for the riffraff who wandered in unwittingly just to buy a book. Conversation in the backroom on the couch was a privilege reserved for Harvard boys, wealthy patrons and the well-known poets in residence across the street. If you weren’t attractive, eloquent or at least well-educated, you weren’t welcome back...
...seat is now 32 in. from the one in front of it, though that is still cramped compared with first-class seats in other aircraft, which come in at 50 in. or more. It will still cost about $9,000 a flight. That will be enough to keep the riffraff away. But the times are now bad for both the economy and the nerves. Will that combination keep away celebrities and captains of industry...
...test our received beliefs and give up our comfortable intuitions, so that when we do venture into the unsafe world beyond the gates, we can do so with the full confidence of our convictions. That is why the university has gates: not so much to keep out the riffraff, but to provide a sanctuary from the turbulence outside...