Campus Community? What Campus Community?
John Bambenek
[excerpted]
“…If diversity means having a bunch of different groups who don’t really associate with each other in the same general area, than these types of programs are a resounding success. However, if these programs are supposed to create a community in any sense of the word, they are a dramatic failure. As with most race-based programs, all the gets produced is more division.
What all these culture houses, cultural programs, and race-based admission policies do is take people by race, group them together, and make sure everyone realizes that they are distinct. The inherent meaning of African-American homecoming is that the African-Americans have their own events and the white students have theirs. Having a Latino culture house, a Japanese culture house, an African-American culture house, and a LGBT culture house means that those houses become a sanctuary for people to only associate with their ‘group.’ Far from creating diversity, it creates division and makes the student body pick up the tab. It makes administrators feel good about promoting ‘cultural awareness’ while all but ensuring the divisions remains firmly in place. [more...]
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