I applaud The Badger Herald for putting out this call for letters, because it gets to the heart of why the recent conversations about “diversity” have been so contentious and ultimately damaging to our campus climate. There are a number of people on this campus who are ready for the conversation about diversity to disappear, and probably an equal number who would like to keep the conversation going. I would be thrilled to work and to learn on a campus where I never had to hear the D-word again, but a campus where the conversation about diversity is a non-issue is one that has created and maintained a climate that does not overtly or silently privilege the needs of any particular race, class or gender on campus. The ways in which these conversations have become debates, and the ways in which both sides of these debates have often resorted to name-calling and stereotyping, strongly suggest this university is not yet ready for it to become a non-issue. I fear, however, that these conversations are at risk of disappearing, not because diversity as I have defined it has been achieved, but because “diversity” has become a clich?. This call for letters itself responds to the overwhelming feeling that diversity has become a word completely devoid of meaning.
People who are tired of the conversation are not necessarily “racists” or “bigots”, and people who are interested in keeping the conversation alive are not necessarily “unqualified” minority students who “unfairly” benefited from UW’s diversity initiatives. We resort to stereotyping both groups, and we resort to assuming the issue is the concern of only these two groups because we have lost sight of why cultivating a student body that more accurately reflects the increasingly multicultural United States is fundamental to justifying UW’s existence as a public land grant university supported by tax dollars.
I could count the number of people I know who have actually read UW’s mission statement on one hand, yet it is a document that so beautifully articulates why the university is here, who it aims to serve and how it hopes to train its students to serve others. It is only by reflecting upon the actual words of our university’s mission statement that we can begin to understand why UW has invested time and money in programs such as Shadow Day (a college recruitment event targeted toward underrepresented racial minorities as well as lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender students), the Posse program, the Campus Women’s Center and the Multicultural Student Center.
The primary purpose of the University of Wisconsin-Madison is to provide a learning environment in which faculty, staff and students can discover, examine critically, preserve and transmit the knowledge, wisdom and values that will help ensure the survival of this and future generations and improve the quality of life for all. The university seeks to help students develop an understanding and appreciation for the complex cultural and physical worlds in which they live, and to realize their highest potential of intellectual, physical and human development.
Significantly, the mission statement mentions nothing about how the university aims to create doctors, accountants or nurses, or how it is here to provide indecisive undergraduate and graduate students a few more years to figure out what it is they want to do with their lives. The university is here because it hopes to create and apply knowledge that will “improve the quality of life for all.” If it is true that knowledge is power, and that it is through the acquisition of knowledge that people may “realize their highest potential,” then it is crucial for the university to remain cognizant of who has access to this knowledge. In many ways, the commitment to ensuring access to the university does not silently privilege certain generations of students, certain genders or sexual orientations, certain ethnic and racial backgrounds and certain socioeconomic statuses is a profound affirmation of the ideals that justify the existence of this institution of higher learning, and our existence as students on this campus.
Sincerely,
Jeanette Tran
Graduate Student
Department of English
Asian-American representative of the Multicultural Student Center Advisory Board