An Etonian And A State-Schooled Scot Get Greggs

Both names have been changed.

“There are definitely people I went to school with who are pompous tw*ts,” Ben, a former Etonian, told me as we sat in the main library. The following evening Ben would meet Sam, a former state-schooler, to get Greggs and talk about the St Andrews class divide. I wouldn’t be there for their discussion, but I’d separately interview each person before and afterwards. They’d never met before.

“I might go into this talk and walk out having my mind completely changed,” Sam told me. “I could also walk into it and think that this guy does not understand what I’m trying to say.” 

“I think it’ll just be a regular conversation,” Ben said. “I don’t think it’ll be a complete shock to me... I’ve talked to friends who I’d assume have had similar experiences.” 

Ben was raised mostly in London. He lived abroad for several years, then spent five years at Eton, took a gap year, and now studies International Relations and Philosophy. “I know I’m very lucky to have the background I’ve had,” he said. 

He saw the class divide in St Andrews reflected, above all, in people’s bank balances. “There is a certain division with people who can afford to go to all the balls, and go out every night or whatever, and maybe people who can’t do that.” 

Your alma mater matters, too. When he arrived in St Andrews, he met many people through former schoolmates. “That gave me a shoe in the door, which some people wouldn't have,” he said.

Sam was raised in Glasgow and attended a local state school his whole life. He now studies Chemistry. “For the first three months of my life, me and my sister and my mother were in a homeless shelter,” he told me. As an infant, he lived in council housing, but as he grew older, his family grew richer. “I was boosted from lower class to maybe even upper-middle-class.” Last year, though, his family’s finances deteriorated. Now, he’s unsure if he has the funds to graduate from university. 

For Sam, the class divide in St Andrews is often implicitly expressed. “It’s not [that] they will look down on you because you’re from a [certain] class, but they’ll look down on you because you were busy working a third job to help support your mum who’s working minimum wage, so you couldn’t play f*****g golf in your free time, and then, ‘Oh, you don’t have a handicap of minus two?’” 

Sometimes, classism can be very explicit. Sam remembered an incident in Subway when he was with another Scottish friend. “I personally don’t have the thickest accent, but he does, and these two guys behind us in the line started laughing at us.” 

Classism can also be ambiguous. When people around him make 'ironic' jokes about class, Sam isn't always sure if he is the punchline. “Whether these people are actually classist? Whether they have a half-smirk? I don’t know,” he said.

When Sam and Ben debriefed me after their meeting, each stressed how much they had found in common. Both thought that private schools drove inequality, but still sympathised with the concept. “I mean, if I had a child, of course I’d want the best for them,” Sam said. “I can see why people think it should be illegal, because it does give people a very strong advantage in life, but at the same time, there are a lot of strong advantages in life.” Neither had strong opinions of banning or reforming Britain’s education system. “We’re both rather unpolitical people,” Sam said.

Both agreed that state-schooled St Andreans had to work harder to get into the University. “It was definitely easier for me to get in than Sam,” Ben said. “My school helped me out quite a lot.” 

Despite that, Sam didn’t think it was fair for state-schoolers to hold their peers’ private education against them. “That’s just still classism, right?” 

Ben also thought it was “unfair” to resent private-schoolers, but he understood why people might be “wary” when they heard he went to Eton. “They might compare their life experience to mine, and think we won’t really mesh.” 

Both Sam and Ben managed to make each other think differently on some things. Sam hadn’t realised that so many private-schoolers had received financial aid. When he learnt that a quarter of people at Eton were on bursaries, he was “shocked”, Ben remembered. The discussion changed how Ben thought about the importance of accents. “I remember saying I didn’t think it mattered that much,” Ben said. “Talking to him made me realise it does affect some people.”

For most of the meetup, they were on the same page. Neither thought the University could do much about class. “It’s tough, because a lot of the class divisions are dictated by the students themselves,” Ben said. He and Sam agreed that the biggest exception was accommodation. 

“I’ve known people who simply cannot afford to live with their friends in St Andrews,” Sam said. “So they pay less money to go live in Cupar with people they don’t know as well.” Sam didn’t think class was inescapable, though. Especially when everyone still lives in halls, he thought, there’s a lot of mixing. “Your average friend group?” he asked. “I don’t think they would be super divided by class.” 

Ben agreed. Class isn’t the “be all and end all,” he told me. “It’s not like I’m asking people what school they went to, and won’t be friends with them because of that.” 

How did Ben and Sam find each other? “He was very friendly,” Ben said. “There weren’t any points where we clashed.” 

Their biggest point of tension between the two was, perhaps, their respective Greggs orders. “We both hadn’t really been to Greggs much,” Ben remembered. What does someone’s Greggs habits tell you about them? “I don’t really think it reveals that much.”

Sam described things differently. Sam said he did have a regular order: the ham and cheese baguette, or simply “banger”. However, “[Ben] just said, I usually don’t eat at Greggs,” Sam remembered. “When someone’s really rich, their answer to that question is, ‘What is Greggs?’”

Baked goods habits aside, Sam had been impressed by Ben. He’d had some reservations going in, but Ben was “very down to earth.” They ended up talking for over an hour. “We just vibed out,” Sam said.

One thing in particular stood out to Sam from their discussion: at some point, Ben had mentioned that it was quite easy to switch from Eton to St Andrews. “He said St Andrews and Eton almost felt comparable, because they’re the same vibe. I thought that was interesting,” Sam told me. “I don’t know. I didn’t go to Eton.”

Illustration: Holly Ward