As an advocate of cultural diversity, awareness and participation, I was quite dismayed to read the staff editorial in the Tuesday, April 12, 2005 edition of The Chronicle where the first sentence read “weekends devoted solely to the recruitment of a single minority group fail to give prospective students an accurate perception of Duke and contribute to the self-segregation that is already pervasive on campus.”
Minority recruitment weekends are the best perception of the Duke community that any recruitment weekend we currently have can give. I would contend that Blue Devil Days are not student recruitment weekends—white or otherwise. The perception of Blue Devil Days equates to a parent recruitment weekend; student-led tours across freshly reseeded grass into dining facilities that provide food the targeted students will not see until the next Blue Devil Days come around. All the while these students are tethered to their parents. Blue Devil Days students are neglected twice: they are not exposed to an “accurate perception of Duke” nor are they given the freedom to find it. How then can we be against a weekend that allows prospective students to come and be students for a weekend?
Yet it is the minority students who are not given the full experience. “They only get to see the events hosted by their minority group instead of seeing a campus where students of all ethnicities and backgrounds interact with one another.” My initial reaction to this statement is to ask, “Do you go to Duke?” Instead I would like to highlight a few of the events of the weekend in question: MEZCLA, the BSA Fashion Show and the NPHC Step Show.
These events are open to the entire Duke Community. MEZCLA and the Fashion Show drew a crowd of all races to a very classy display of creativity on the part of Duke Students. The events that took place after the Fashion Show also drew a diverse crowd where “students of all ethnicities and backgrounds interact with one another.” I still have white, Asian, Latino and Indian friends coming up to me saying, “Wow, I had never seen one of those before.” Mind you, some of these friends are seniors who for four years have been exposed to “a true picture of Duke.”
If the University were to do a study of the demographics at each of the major University events that do not advertise free alcohol, the step show would surpass or rival each event. Duke’s National Pan Hellenic Council put on an entertaining display of culture for thousands of Duke Students, as well as Durham community members. Of those who would question the diversity of minority student recruitment weekends I would ask, have you actually attended any of the events of the weekends? Or is it that there is a perception that the words “minority student” equate to “not for me”? Take a moment and ask yourself: is it the minority student recruitment weeks that “set up the very divide we are trying to break down,” or is it the students here on campus who do not step out of their comfort zones to embrace a new (read: different) culture? It is counterintuitive for us to be against minority student recruitment weekends when those who are not in favor of the events—staff editorialists or even the champion of diversity himself President Richard Brodhead—do not come out to support events of cultural diversity and school unity.
Rather than reaching out, we as proponents of “diversity” look to pull in BSAI and LSRW to the general recruitment weekend. “This way, prospective students can be exposed to the greater Duke community and still see the smaller community offered by cultural groups.” But what is it that the greater Duke Community has to offer if not the Step Shows, the MEZCLAs, the AWAAZs and the Lunar New Years? Duke is a school that boasts of its diversity until said diversity shows its face. At that point, we react with student editorials that cry out for assimilation. We cry out for cultural groups to take their place in the “smaller Duke community” and remain a part of the rhetoric rather than reality.
Those who come to minority student recruitment weekends and participate in its events get to see the very diversity that we as a University want to see. More importantly, they experience reality. Biases exist; sometimes they exist on this campus. Frustrations arise between communities when one doesn’t “get it.” There are needs to be addressed, but there is hope for the future. That is what we should be advertising as the “true Duke experience.”
The students who are receptive to this kind of experience are exactly the students we should be recruiting. We cannot presume to recruit students who will simply not rock the boat and state that we are a homogenous diverse community. At that point we are avoiding the issues that are realities of the world we live in, not creating “a more diversified approach” in the way we think.
I ask these questions because I have found in my years at Duke that there is a population of students and faculty is so busy espousing rhetoric about diversity that we are not seeing the realities of what is being done and trying to aid in continuing the efforts. We—you, me, staff editorialist, President Brodhead, and Cameron Crazies alike—have the right idea. But now is the time to turn rhetoric into reality instead of writing editorials that “contribute to the self-segregation that is already pervasive on campus.” Open your eyes to the world that is growing around you. Recognize that the Duke you are a proponent of was just exemplified for you in one amazing weekend.
Al Curtis is a Trinity senior.
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