Dogface: at Michigan, it doesn’t. They used to give special points for being from someplace like Wyoming. Or being poor. Or being from a county in MI from which few students enroll. The University aimed for a truly diverse class, not just once with a lot of different skin tones. It still does, but it no longer uses the point system which automatically bumps folks that offer that sort of diversity in perspective and background.
Race, being a protected class AND one hell of a hot-button issue, was the one that got legal attention. But I promise you, intelligent educators never limit “diversity” to simply race or skin tone.
I’m a little put-off recently by a brochure from my own alma mater (Earlham) which talks about one of the benefits of alumni donations being the funding of scholarships. They interview a (white) student who says that, without the scholarship provided, she would not have been the first person of her family to ever make it to college. Then she goes on to say that in addition to letting people like her study there, an important use of scholarship money is with minorities, since that increases diversity.
So here I am, thinking that this young woman is from a working class background, from a non-urban area, from a poorer county in the state (there were more details about her in the article), and here she has already been brainwashed to not see HERSELF as an example of that great “diversity” merely because she was white.
Such attitudes have not changed since the day I shook that college’s dust from off my feet, over a decade ago. Thus, there seem to be plenty of educators who don’t seem to qualify as “intelligent”.
Earlham is a wonderful school, Dogface–glad to know you went there.
That young person was not an educator. Clearly, some person at the college has caught on to the idea that funding poorer students–and touting its importance to alumni–is meaningful. So what if a young woman still wet behind the ears uses the word in a limited way? No one person–especially not a student–can be considered the ambassador for an entire institution’s value system. I’m also not sure that one brochure should lead you to conclude that “plenty” of educators don’t get it.
The true holistic nature of “diversity” rarely gets the spotlight, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t actively sought.
I heard the very same drivel myself from more than one person, and not just from students, when I attended Earlham. I used the student as an example that the attitude was still being promulgated. While administrators at Earlham may be getting the point, the professors did and do a miserable job of TEACHING the point, and if they fall down there, then we will see things get bad later, as their students take over.
I think its natural for people to try and “fit” themselves in the dominant stereotypes if they can. Still the girl did make a bad example of “diversity”…