My read of the article was different than this. It’s that when low socioeconomic students were at the university, there were a number of students (allegedly, at one midwestern flagship, 55%) that was on the party-track. As the author defined this as the affluent track, then one might make a few assumptions: 1) might be a large and active Greek scene where dues/fees can be thousands/semester, 2) students going to the bars multiple nights a week (with bar prices for drinks) and getting clubbing attire (whether for a club or house parties), 3) students with cars, quite possibly very nice cars (i.e. luxury and/or late model), etc. If a significant portion of the student body seems this way, one doesn’t need to have gotten free/reduced lunch to feel out of place. Plus, if the striving students from a lower SES went to high schools where their studious habits were put down, maybe they thought things were going to be different once they got to college and then found out, hmm, maybe not.
Thus, it seems perfectly possible that academically capable students from lower SES might feel impacted if their campus has a significant number of affluent students from OOS on the party-track. I did not, however, indicate that this is what was going on at all universities with large numbers of OOS students. I was asking whether others had seen/felt this to be a legitimate concern.