Opinion
Diversity requirement will help build a better Hamilton
By Leonard Collins '15
February 20, 2015
People do not truly understand themselves unless they understand others. However, people’s social and intellectual growth is stunted when they are not required to frequently engage with people different from themselves. According to a study by Professors Thomas F. Nelson Laird of Indiana University and Mark E. Engberg of Loyola University, “embedding diversity within the core curriculum indicates that knowledge about diversity is an essential component of a college education” because it opens students to a wide-ranging world of perspectives. However, Hamilton College’s lack of a diversity requirement prevents its students from enjoying the abundance of experiences that people of different backgrounds can offer.
Hamilton College, like many liberal arts colleges, has made it a mission “to prepare students to make choices and accept the responsibilities of citizenship in a democratic world of intellect and diversity.” However, when you look on Martin’s Way, you can see people grouping themselves into different niches, unwilling to migrate outside of their comfort zones. Throughout the past two years especially, Hamilton College has witnessed growing incidents of derogatory racial, gender and sexual orientation bias, including people in cars screaming at others of a different race, or people writing the word “fag” on bathroom doors. What is worse is that these incidents are observed at a greater frequency than these reports suggest, but very few openly acknowledge these events for fear of the social repercussions. Students want to find community within a vast network of support in which the can enjoy college to the fullest. But by shunning people outside your social comfort zone, you are in fact preventing yourself from enjoying college to the fullest.
A diversity requirement in the College’s curriculum would open the doors to a long overdue discussion concerning how our differences are the greatest assets we have on campus. If students entering their first-year were required to attend a diversity course for even half of a credit, they would understand Hamilton College’s stance on creating a safe environment for its unique body of students. People would learn about common micro-aggressions that alienate some people from expressing their identities on campus. Mostly, diversity requirements would help build a stronger community of people that do not feel pressured to fit a certain image, or alienated by people who can only accept one version of someone’s self.