Reading this article about a study led by a UW professor made me think about the approach taken by Plan 2008 and the overall attitude that we have on campus about the way to increase diversity. The article wasn’t very specific about the study, so I found a better one:
Researchers polled 2,465 African American, Asian American, and Latino teenagers ages 14 to 19 attending seven public high schools in the midwestern and western United States. The students were given a list of the crowds most commonly mentioned by other teens at their school and asked to indicate the one they identified with most closely. In addition, a group of students placed all their classmates (including those initially polled) into crowds; the researchers then looked for characteristics that distinguished adolescents who were part of ethnically oriented crowds from adolescents who were part of non-ethnic crowds.
The prevailing wisdom here at the UW seems to be that our problems with diversity are based upon some lack of understanding of other cultures and lack of opportunities to find other people who share a similar culture. Hence why such emphasis is placed on things like the ethnic studies requirement and multicultural student groups. Evidence can be found throughout the recommendations from Plan 2008. From the “Undergraduate Recruiting Goals”
Students continue to host prospective students and work with them through SOAR (Student Orientation, Advising and Registration), providing them with early information on multi-cultural activities and with contacts to UW students with similar backgrounds and interests.
and later under “Retention, Climate, Freshman Experience, and Curriculum”
Appoint a committee to discuss the establishment of a residential college with an international, multi-cultural living/learning focus and report by May 2000
…
Schools and colleges other than Letters and Science develop ethnic studies courses where appropriate.
Incorporate diversity-related content into courses where appropriate.
Based on the approach taken by the UW, one would think that students of color spend most of their time hanging out with other students of color because they share a similar culture. The findings of the aforementioned study show exactly the opposite.
The study found that ethnic crowd affiliation was not widespread, particularly among biracial youth. Only about 30% of the teenagers were placed by peers in ethnically oriented crowds, and only half that number associated themselves with such crowds. Teens in the ethnic categories studied were more likely to be placed by peers—and to place themselves—in crowds that were not defined ethnically.
Granted the study is not perfect. It is a study of high school aged kids at only 7 different high schools. But nonetheless, I think that it offers some insight into what might have potentially gone wrong with Plan 2008. When only 15% of high school students of color associate themselves with an ethnicly oriented group of friends, that means to me that the majority of them feel that cultural similarities are not as important as their other characteristics. Like the ones that make them associate themselves with groups given as examples by the study:
…or with crowds based on individual abilities and interests (such as so-called jocks, druggies, populars, Goths, brains, loners, and nerds)
If we are going to spend millions of dollars trying to increase diversity here at the UW, doesn’t it make sense that we should be spending at least some of that money researching how best to improve diversity here. I think the success of Plan 2008 illustrates pretty well that we don’t exactly know what we’re doing and as great as multicultural groups are, maybe the focus of our efforts on improving the campus climate for students of color should be spent elsewhere.
