Month: November 2011

There are many different effects that race play here at Trinity. One major aspect of race at Trinity is the social aspect. People talk about race being a factor in many different parts of Trinity College, yet there are still major issues that are clearly visible but have not been fixed.  These problems, such as, friend groups, frat life, and extracurricular activities are all either causes or effects of a racial divide. These problems are demonstrated in the interviews our class preformed, the books we read and the experience I have had at Trinity.

There may not be an easy solution to fix these problems, and there may not even be a guaranteed solution, but something needs to be done. I feel that on the first day of school it is not necessary for the minority students to come early to school to meet each other. This only makes the divide larger because minorities are much more likely to only become friends with other minorities. One solution may be to have every student show up at the same time so every student is in the same situation when they arrive. Also, frats are a huge divider on campus between races. By enforcing the President’s idea of turning the frats into “theme houses”, this could solve the problem. It may take a while to accomplish some of these goals but if it will help towards a more united community it will be worth it.

The sources that will be necessary to support these ideas are the interviews, the books our class read and my personal observations. Also things such as the President’s proposal to change the frats would give good support for reasons, such as helping social divides. Talking to leaders in the PRIDE program could also help get different perspectives on the some of these ideas.

Problem:

The topic I want to talk about for this paper is the issue of race and social class clique’s on campus.  Through our previous investigations and observations on campus, students tend to hang out with students within the same race and/or social class as themselves on campus.  It is important for college students to become more exposed to diversity.  The problem at Trinity is that students who come to college to become more diverse are not necessarily getting this experience as the campus generally lacks diversity, especially compared to other colleges.

Solution:

One solution to this problem on Campus would be the creation of a social centre.  Currently, Trinity lacks a centre where all students can go to socialize without feeling pressured to do anything.  It is important for a college campus to have a facility like this that’s main focus is to encourage socialization, without being in a cafeteria, coffee shop, or library.  Further, using a name like the “social centre” creates an open environment that all students would feel welcomed in.  The issue with this solution would be a large cost.

More information:

In order to further strengthen this paper I believe I need to find more examples from other colleges about how diversity has been a factor on campus.  Also, it would be interesting to find exact statistics regarding Trinity’s diversity compared to other colleges, because I know it is significantly low.   From here, it would be interesting to draw connections about the benefits of being exposed to large amounts of diversity.  This could also be related to Stuber, as she believes social class greatly influences a student’s social life at college.  Further, finding out the exact statistics on how many of the Trinity sophomores felt race and social class played a role within whom they interacted with on campus would also be a good comparison.

I would like to work with Christy on this paper as I feel we collaborate as a team very well and we are interested in discussing the same issue on campus.  I feel working in a partnership would strengthen our paper as we will be able to find more examples and think of more solutions that come from more then one persons perspective.

One problem that often takes place not only on the Trinity Campus but in many other places is that when it comes to issues regarding hate acts about race many of these times these get pushed under the rug. According to the Final Report of the Charter Committee on Campus Climate “our community has been marred repeatedly by malicious acts of racism” (pg 1) and that is why this report was put together. It is vital that in order to end these acts those students who are part of these acts are severely punished for this.

Throughout this year there has been multiple emails concerning hate acts on campus. The purpose of those emails is to let he community know that this has happen and to assure them that the people responsible for this will be punished. After the first email informing the community that this has happen I have never seen more follow ups regarding these issues. The first step to solving this is to make sure that everything that can be done to figure out who was part of this hate acts is done. It is also really important to make sure that the community knows that these acts will be intolerable and that the biggest punishment will be applied to those individuals that take part in these activities. Part of this solution is also to figure out that those people coming into Trinity are not gonna be part of this group of people that are responsible for these hate acts. I think that idea of final report of asking a question regarding community/diversity to Trinity’s applications is a good idea.

I think that in order to build a stronger paper I need to find out the different hate acts that have taken place at Trinity and what has been the consequences to the individuals that were part of them. I also need to find out how does Trinity go about investigating hate acts and what are the written rules regarding this matter.