As Saint Louis University students step back onto campus this week, they are bound to notice more than a few new faces.
Just as China has prepared to welcome thousands of international visitors for the 2008 Olympics, SLU has mobilized its recruitment forces in Asia to court more international students. And, this year, those efforts paid off: the number of incoming freshmen from China has doubled over last year’s figure. Nearly one-sixth of Reinert Hall residents will hold citizenship in a foreign nation.
All of this, it seems, comes in an attempt to increase “diversity” on campus. Diversity, already a buzzword for more than a decade, is commonly used by corporate executives and university administrators nationwide in a cultural, national and racial context. Its purpose is to combine a bevy of social groups and traditions into one campus community. And at SLU, it is likely meant to be the antidote for the upper middle class, Catholic high school-educated, culturally homogenous reputation for which this university’s students was once infamous, and which the administration dares not hedge again.
SLU administrators have taken great steps to ensure that the University’s cultural stands up to the challenge of cultural diversity, both in recruitment programs and services for those international students who are already here.
But one needs not look past the Busch Student Center or the West Pine Mall to notice that SLU students still tend toward cultural segregation, and that they segregate themselves.
It is human nature to feel comfortable with those most like yourself. A shared tradition often means shared experiences, shared values and shared worldviews. Thus, it makes sense to see students with similar cultural upbringings-be that in a rural Midwestern American town or that of a sprawling city on a different continent-spending time together. Ask any of SLU’s myriad of study-abroad students, current or veteran, and you’ll hear that it’s tempting to spend time speaking English to a small circle of American friends.
But this behavior, both from native SLU students and visiting students, exacerbates differences instead of exploring them. To truly learn from one another, and to truly respect the cultures we represent, we must step out of our comfort zones, stretch a hand across the societal divide and say hello.
We must treat people as people, rather than manifestations of “other”-ness. We must first seek out similarities, and then investigate what makes our backgrounds unique. In this way, students can meet one another soul-to-soul and face-to-face.
Should visiting students assimilate into American culture, or should SLU students over-sensitively adopt the traditions of others?
Yes and no. Visiting students will benefit from learning all they can from American culture by being inside of it, and current students will do the same by opening themselves up to new ways of thinking. But neither culture should be ignored. Instead, we must embrace our respective cultures. We must consider where they brush shoulders, where they butt heads, where they hold hands. That is where true understanding lies.
A challenge for SLU students: Integrate the segregated diversity we already have. Unify our community, one conversation at a time. When “diversity” transcends its status or a buzzword and becomes a concept that is a part of each of us at a deep level, we’ll know that we have made progress.
