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.
Lucy, your focus on a “social centre” (or “social center” as the US spells it) is interesting, but you need to dig deeper. How would a “multicultural center” or similar building directly address racial or social class tensions on a cmapus? What other campuses have built buildings solely dedicated to this purpose? Can you find examples?