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little humility can help bridge cultural gaps Diversity is an ever-present issue in the development of our university. Campus billboards and brochures seem to project the image that we are an incredibly diverse community living harmoniously in a utopian environment. If you believe this, it would be recommended you stop reading now and crawl back under your shell, or get back into your Lexus at least. The diversity on campus is clearly lacking, but TCU is trying to improve this situation. Groups such as the International Student Association help create a community where foreign students can relate to each other, which should definitely help attract more minorities to choose TCU to further their education. Last year’s freshman class comprised of 13 percent minority students, who represent countless political and religious viewpoints. However, with the many different perspectives our foreign students possess, are the other 87 percent of incoming students going to learn anything about these other cultures in their 4 (to 6) years at TCU? In The Main, there is a vast array of people with different backgrounds, but they always seem to be bunched together. Anyone who frequents The Main knows where the athletes sit, or where the Brothers Under Christ or the Lambda Chi Alpha members usually sit. We are so consumed with making sure we sit in our “group” that the same people are often left out of the mix. Those who do always have a group to sit with are continually shielding themselves from anyone outside of their group. As you may be thinking, altering seating arrangements in The Main is not the solution for changing the diversity situation in the student body, but unfortunately it seems to be a model of what diversity is like in other areas of the university. In the classroom, we have Caucasian professors lecturing about other cultures to a room almost entirely comprised of Caucasian students of similar backgrounds, yet the professor fails to even ask the few minorities to give a first-hand perspective of his or her own culture. Though they might not be able to quote specific statistics from their culture, a first-hand viewpoint can make a much larger impression than a PowerPoint presentation with endless charts and graphs. Another problem in the classroom is the avoidance of diversity-related discussions for fear of offending someone. For example, I have heard students say they were glad a certain minority person wasn’t present in class on a day when discussions were related to diversity because they were afraid of saying something that would offend that person. If what you are saying could be deemed offensive to another race or sex, then maybe you should rethink your stance and look at why this is the case. If you are stating an opinion or viewpoint you wholeheartedly believe in, then don’t be afraid to say it. The only way we can learn from each other is to express our views and inform fellow students about how our background influences these views. Maybe you will offend someone, but when they give their side of the issue, you’ll get to hear why they believe what they do. Maybe you’ll even learn something, and hopefully, they will too. It’s amazing how just a little humility can help bridge even the greatest of cultural gaps. Jeff
Dennis is a junior history major from Gail. |
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