I am being critical of that. The more I think through this, the stronger I come to the conclusion that this whole thing is of negative value, actively subverting the only goals that matter, and it might as well be shut down. This whole thing is a useless farce.
As long as we're discussing privilege, the correct use of privilege would be to tell the school to just go to hell, run the experiment anyhow with the probably $10 of equipment you need, and submit something to the actual science fair as perfunctory as possible that will let you pass (leaning on your "privilege" to pass). And skip the visits to the microbiologists, because that proves the wrong point. You should be doing this on your own.
As long as we're discussing privilege, the correct use of privilege would be to tell the school to just go to hell, run the experiment anyhow with the probably $10 of equipment you need, and submit something to the actual science fair as perfunctory as possible that will let you pass (leaning on your "privilege" to pass). And skip the visits to the microbiologists, because that proves the wrong point. You should be doing this on your own.