Bucknell’s diversity must change from the inside

By Caitlin Doolin
Contributing Writer

I am a white University student. Am I not diverse? What if I were in a wheel chair? Or gay? Am I diverse now?

The University is making a concentrated effort to put a spotlight on this issue and is striving to make our campus more “diverse.” Let’s consider what diversity actually brings to a campus. True, diversity creates an atmosphere filled with people from all walks of life. It brings different perspectives and forces students to learn to work with different types of people. That does not necessarily link to different races, which I think is highly confused on this campus.

Diversity stretches past the color of our skin and includes people from the projects, Beverley Hills and the great plains of Kansas. It embraces heterosexuals, homosexuals, people from private schools and people from home schools. It is skinny people and fat people and, yes, it even includes white people. In the real world, one in every 10 people you know is gay, and Caucasians are a minority in large states like California and Texas. In the real world, you will have to work with people who cannot speak English perfectly, but some of those people will be much more educated than you, despite their accent. College is an important time to learn the life-long skill called acceptance, but many people live their entire lives ignorantly without it.

I never saw acceptance as an issue at our school first-hand until a recent guest lecture. The lecturer was from a foreign country and had received a B.A. and a Ph.D. in the United States. She spoke English at a slower-than-conversational pace and had a thick accent, but if you listened to her carefully, her words and knowledge were clear. She was undoubtedly qualified, and the confidence it takes to give a professional presentation in a second language is probably something few of us will ever acquire. Yet, disappointingly, the only comments I heard on the speaker were complaints about her accent.

There was so much focus on what made her different that what she brought to the lecture was missed–not only the subject matter of her lecture, but also the life story of the lecturer, who traveled across the world to receive a Ph.D. in a second language. That’s pretty inspiring.

Let’s not fool ourselves into thinking that just because we do not personally consider ourselves prejudiced that we are accepting of others. If the University is going to continue to diversify, it needs to do so in such a way so that diversity is finely integrated into a seamless norm on our campus.

While the number of minority students present at the University has increased dramatically, there are vital internal changes the school has yet to make that could increase the diverse experience students receive on campus.

The University’s faculty need to be leaders in efforts for diversity on campus. When I was in New Zealand, each of my four professors was from a different country, and three of my engineering professors were women (which is more than I have had in all three years at the University). The diversity of faculty I experienced studying abroad had a significant impact on my learning and brought new perspectives to my college experience.

Our faculty can and should be the meat of the diversity that students experience. Increased diversity amongst our faculty could have a ripple effect on the ability of University students to work closely with different people and open student’s eyes to new perspectives. The University could open its doors to different student demographics by having its faculty represent different populations from which it desires to draw.

The University has taken on the responsibility to improve diversity on campus. However, this cannot be merely a game of numbers and percentages amongst the student body. The University must commit to a change in diversity from within before it can expect a change in diversity amongst the student body.