This image was lost some time after publication.

For her Yale senior project, financial aid student Aurora Nichols took pictures of three months' worth of her mundane purchases and displayed them alongside her classmates' abstract paintings. This prompted quite a bit of attention for Aurora on campus, including a profile in the Hartford Courant in which Aurora revealed some less-than-flattering assessments of class dynamics at her alma mater. Then, on the autoadmit message boards, the richies tore her a new one.

"The thought if people having to rub elbows with such a gauche and uppity poor and worse her yokel trash family made me ill. Why do we have to be egalitarian?" said "AntiGunner." Maybe he was being sarcastic? Sure.

But then there's this, from "Square:" "I don't even know where to begin with this. It's entirely ridiculous. What a self-righteous brat. Maybe if she didn't waste her time at Yale "educating" others about what it's like to be poor, she'd have a useful education, an ability to earn money in the future, and could have borrowed another $10K or so in loans (STILL coming in damn cheaply) to jet off on spring break or go to dinner or wtfever with her rich "friends" (though clearly we can't call them friends, since this poor little thing was such a class-outsider). Also, what kind of poor pays for Amtrack [sic]?"

Eeek. And: "Her story is proof that elites lower the bar for poors. 5th in her class at a TTT high school, and a 1440 SAT should not be getting her into Yale," says "slick_nick."

Takeaway, besides "Some Yalies are overprivileged assholes?" We're going to have to start saying "poors." It has such a good ring to it.