I remember walking into class on a sunny Thursday afternoon last fall, the SLU homepage loaded onto the screen hanging from the Noble Center classroom. My face was on it, a picture from my summer abroad experience in Israel-Palestine, the backdrop a beautiful garden with the city of Tel Aviv behind me. My professor, obviously amused, pointed at the screen and smiled.
“That picture is going to be up there for a while,” she said. “It checks off all the boxes.”
All the boxes. It didn’t take much thought to understand what she meant. Here was this picture, in a far away place in the Middle East, with a group that “checked off all the boxes.”
Yes, it was a great experience, but my professor’s statement opened my eyes to a new realization: the celebration of SLU’s diversity is not just a means of showing how accepting we think we are of students of diverse backgrounds. Instead, it seems as if students of color are used as an advertisement, a tool used by university pamphlets to distort a population that is not prioritized in any context except to enhance the experience of the dominant group.
I’m not saying that this is purposeful. I’m also not saying it isn’t. What I’m saying is that regardless of intent, this realization comes with very serious repercussions on the experience and success of students of color.
The Campus Climate Survey and diversity and inclusion workshops are both examples of positive movement towards understanding the flaws within our campus culture. St. Lawrence does a better job at issues of diversity than other schools like it, but that isn’t what I’m concerned about.
My concern is that we have become complacent and comfortable with knowing that we are better than other schools as an excuse to rationalize the stagnation of future improvement.
What worries me is that we still have a campus unprepared to deal with the unique mental health issues that are prominent within minority students. We still have a campus that in its subtext promotes not the acceptance of outside cultures, but rather the assimilation of those cultures to conform to a dominant group. I see too many minority students who struggle to find their place slip and fall between the cracks, wondering where was the inviting and welcoming campus promised to them in the admissions pamphlets mailed to their homes.
I’ll give you an example. There is not a single doubt in my mind that students of color are dispersed across the dozens of FYPs that existed throughout the First-Year dorms. There aren’t many of us, and I could easily see the rationality behind making sure every dorm hall, and every FYP, has at least a taste of outside culture.
For the dominant group, this is great. But what are the damages to the students of color? My FYP had 30 students. Two of them were students of color. The gap that exists between the percieved “us” and the perceived “them” is one that too often never gets closed. Those relationships sometimes never develop, and the uncomfortable glances and awkward interactions lead to even further marginalizing a group that has had enough of it.
Again, I’m not saying that this is purposeful. And I don’t have the time nor the space on this page to give you the plethora of other examples that support my claims.
Maybe I’m not just a false advertisement on a school webpage. But I sure do yearn for a day where I stop feeling like one.
I agree with you about the way diversity is used as an advertisement. As much I strive to understand what you are going through, you move back and forth between “diversity” and “students of color” and in-between you miss the group of people who are international yet not “of color”. By doing that, you exclude a big portion of the school’s diverse population, who equally struggle with issues such as the ones you described above. Yes, i’m white. However my picture was also used to advertise school’s diversity. Additionally, I was the only international student in my FYP. This comment is not mean to underestimate the issues the students of color face in this school (which are important), just to give some food for thought.