AFTER NEARLY two years of silence on the issue, Student Council announced this week that it will begin new discussions of a proposal to eliminate first-year housing choice in an effort to promote greater diversity. The goal of increased racial and ethnic diversity in first-year housing is a good one, but Council should be aware of the negative consequences this proposal will have for minority students. In considering the proposal to eliminate first-year housing choice, Council must heed the concerns of minority groups and avoid compromising their "peer support networks" in the effort to create a more diverse first-year experience.
Minority students comprise 30 percent of the New Dorms population, but only 12 percent of the Old Dorms population. The proposal to eliminate housing choice plans to resolve this disparity by scattering students throughout first-year dorms without regard for race or ethnicity. A more evenly distributed minority population, the thinking goes, would produce more interracial contact and understanding.
This is a promising plan for diversity and likely to be more effective than the University's past efforts, which consisted mostly of diversity forums attended only by those students already committed to racial harmony. A diverse first-year housing environment can foster year-long contact and interaction between students of different races, even if they have no interest in any organized interracial activities.
But an evenly distributed minority population would primarily benefit white students and Council should recognize this as it considers the new proposal. If housing choice were eliminated and minority students perfectly distributed between New and Old Dorms, the minority population of Old Dorms would rise from 12 percent to 21 percent. This nearly twofold increase would give white students vastly increased opportunities for interracial contact and understanding. Meanwhile, the white population would fall from 88 percent to 79 percent -- a substantial drop, but not enough to prevent the development of strong, supportive relationships among white students. If housing choice were eliminated, then, white students would have the opportunity to develop extensive, productive relationships with minority students without endangering their own sense of community.
However, the experience of minority students under the new proposal would be substantially different. Even in New Dorms, minorities comprise only 30 percent of the population, and they arealready in constant contact with white students. For minority students, dorm life is a lesson in diversity simply by virtue of their small numbers; a marginal increase in the number of white students around them will not make a meaningful difference in their first-year experience. Because they already have so much contact with white students, minority students have little to gain from greater dorm integration.
But they might have a lot to lose, as minority students' organizations have made clear in recent days. The concentrated minority population of New Dorms helps minority students develop friendships and a sense of community that white students generally take for granted. This "peer support network," as Minority Rights Advocacy Coalition Chairman Ryan McCarthy described it, is important to minority students and will be jeopardized by Council's plan to disperse minority students throughout first-year dorms. By distributing the minority population more evenly between New Dorms and Old Dorms, Council may destroy the critical mass of minority students needed to sustain the peer support network.
Given the unequal benefits that white and minority students can expect from the new proposal, Council's attempt to promote racial diversity can be more accurately described as an attempt to expose white students to increased diversity. This is an important goal, but it should not be achieved at the expense of the strong minority communities that exist in New Dorms. Minority students have little to gain from their dispersal throughout first-year dorms and Council should take their interests into account instead of pursuing a mandatory diversity that primarily benefits white students.
The proposal to eliminate choice in first-year housing is one of admirable aims, but it will not be universally beneficial. An even distribution of minority students in first-year dorms will have substantially different effects on white and minority students and Council should be aware of this as it conducts the debate. In striving to promote interracial understanding in first-year dorms, Council must heed the concerns of minority groups and strike a balance between the value of increased diversity and that of the minority peer support network.
(Alec Solotorovsky's column appears Fridays in The Cavalier Daily. He can be reached at asolotorovsky@cavalierdaily.com)
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