2008 Woodie Awards
A Narrow Image of Diversity
Broadening Our Horizons Beyond Multiculturalism
Brandy Bones
Issue date: 11/19/04 Section: Commentary
The topic of this editorial is the Diversity Initiative, my general sentiments regarding the merit of its content and my concerns respecting its implementation. Wanting my argument to be as well-informed and substantiated as possible, I have hesitated on many occasions to write this editorial. Before taking issue publicly with the Diversity Initiative and the administration's prior approach to diversity, I thought it better to wait and allow the administration the opportunity to articulate their own comprehensive definition of what diversity is and produce the evidence to support why Colgate should pursue it. I have read the Strategic Plan, the Report of the Task Force on Campus Culture, the Residential Education Vision and the two diversity documents that strangely appeared on every student's blackboard account a week and a half ago. I attended the faculty panel discussion on the Free Colgate website - ironically and tellingly made up of a homogenous, or better yet, non-diverse panel of six liberal professors and zero conservative - and I attended the first Diversity Council meeting. The administration's approach to diversity is intellectually vacuous, lacks a principled foundation and belittles the individual.
According to the Strategic Plan, "Colgate defines a diverse community as one with a critical mass of people from traditionally underrepresented and disadvantaged groups where difference is viewed as an integral component of the institution, and where all groups and individuals fully benefit from the educational opportunities, in and out of the classroom, of a multicultural environment." It continues, "While Colgate recognizes that many kinds of diversity (such as race, ethnicity, religion, and sexual orientation) benefit the campus community, this strategy focuses most attention on populations that face the greatest contemporary exclusions in the United States."
Thus, the administration's definition of diversity: a community with a critical mass of traditionally underrepresented people.
According to the Strategic Plan, "Colgate defines a diverse community as one with a critical mass of people from traditionally underrepresented and disadvantaged groups where difference is viewed as an integral component of the institution, and where all groups and individuals fully benefit from the educational opportunities, in and out of the classroom, of a multicultural environment." It continues, "While Colgate recognizes that many kinds of diversity (such as race, ethnicity, religion, and sexual orientation) benefit the campus community, this strategy focuses most attention on populations that face the greatest contemporary exclusions in the United States."
Thus, the administration's definition of diversity: a community with a critical mass of traditionally underrepresented people.