EARLY next winter, Newcomb Hall's informal lounge will be transformed from a drab, empty space into a bustling diversity center where students of all cultural backgrounds can mingle in a mutually inclusive environment. Such is the vision of the student diversity advocates who envisioned the center as far back as 1996. But whatever the final value of their efforts, one outcome of this project can be reasonably forecast: As soon as the informal lounge is renamed "Diversity Center," it will become the most homogenous room on Grounds.
This sad possibility is not the result of anyone's ignorance or intolerance. Rather, it is the result of our frequent and improper use of the term "diversity" to describe what is, essentially, the promotion of the specific interests of the University's minority communities. And so, by creating such an ambiguously named center, the University may provide a meeting space for its small, vocal diversity elite while neglecting the greater mass of students who are simply interested in comfortable relations with people of other races.
In recent years, student groups riding the tidal wave of political correctness have embraced diversity, envisioned diversity, promoted diversity and now created a diversity center. But in all of their efforts, these students have failed to answer the most basic question about their cause: What is diversity and why is it good?
Two concrete definitions of "promoting diversity" can be readily drawn from the University's political ether. The first is "promoting comfortable interaction between students of different backgrounds." The second is "promoting the interests of the University's minority communities." Both are worthwhile activities, but they do not lead to the same end. And unless the Diversity Center is conceived in the former spirit, it will quickly become the preserve of a small group of minority rights advocates, instead of an interracial comfort zone accessible to all students.
M. Bruce, chair of the Minority Rights Coalition (a primary sponsor of the Diversity Center), said that the Diversity Center aims to be as inclusive as possible. But like other participants in the University's ongoing diversity dialogue, Bruce and her organization suffer from an inability to define the cause in whose name the Diversity Center is being constructed.
According to the Coalition's Web site, one of its organizational purposes is "to create a university community that truly embraces diversity in all its forms." But to that end, the Coalition proposes a series of initiatives that are primarily designed to advance the interests of the University's minority groups. These include "ensuring more resources and support for minority students; encouraging increased recruitment and retention of minority faculty, students, and staff; moving towards a multicultural curriculum across disciplines, advocating a living wage for all contracted University employees and ensuring equal treatment of gay and lesbian couples through the guarantee of domestic partner benefits."
The contrast between the Coalition's broad aim of promoting diversity and its practical efforts to advance minority interests is illustrative of the larger problem we face in the dialogue of diversity. Until the University community can arrive at a coherent definition of the term, diversity will be a mere abstraction that is used in support of concrete projects and policies, from preferential minority admissions to mandatory diversity training to the new Diversity Center. None of these initiatives is necessarily bad, but the fact that they are all carried on in the name of diversity should raise eyebrows as the Diversity Center nears completion.
When the rhetoric of diversity is used as often to advance minority-specific aims as to promote the general interaction of students across racial lines, a diversity center will more likely become a workspace for minority rights advocates than a genuine forum for interracial interaction. Such an outcome is surely regrettable, but possibly inevitable, given the multiple meanings we assign to diversity. And if the Diversity Center becomes a mere office or social center for the University's minority leaders, it will not be a welcoming place for those students who approach diversity with no agenda but a desire to mingle freely with people of different backgrounds.
In order to avoid marginalizing the Diversity Center, the students and organizations involved in its creation must specify exactly what kind of diversity they plan to promote. If they mean to encourage the comfortable interaction of all students at the University, then they must ensure that the Diversity Center is not used for narrow, minority group-specific purposes. If the advancement of minority interests is, in fact, their goal, then the Diversity Center will not be a very diverse place.
(Alec Solotorovsky is a Cavalier Daily associate editor. He can be reached at asolotorovsky@cavalierdaily.com.)
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