Trinity College’s P.R.I.D.E Program: Unifying Campus

Trinity College—the community, the work environment, and the home of our faculty members, professors, and students—has been long affected by issues regarding violence, hate, bigotry, racism, sexism, sexual abuse, sexual orientation, and social class. What is the main issue here at Trinity College? After acclimating to Trinity’s atmosphere for the past three months, my eyes—the perception of a college freshman— see racism as the main issue on campus. In order to abolish acts of racism, the P.R.I.D.E program needs more resources, more publicity, and more non-color students’ participation; moreover, all students at Trinity College need to participate in a P.R.I.D.E type program.

The “Color and Money” freshmen seminar has recently conducted interviews from students here at Trinity College. We interviewed fifteen sophomores—from different racial backgrounds and social classes—from the Class of 2014. At the interviews, we asked these students questions about their perceptions of race and social class at Trinity College. After finding trends and writing a six page paper of race and social class at Trinity College, I have discovered that race plays a much bigger role here on campus than social class. Students here at Trinity are equally conscious of their social class. However, race at Trinity College has a different meaning from its students. Trinity College students have experienced many different forms of racism. Acts of racism in educational institutions are controversial. Racism does not only occur in colleges, but it is also one of the main global issues. However, acts of racism are very common in small, prestigious college environments like Trinity College.

Trinity College has a program for ALL first-year students called P.R.I.D.E (Promoting Respect for Inclusive Diversity in Education). “P.R.I.D.E is a program organized by the office of Multicultural Affairs aimed at supporting students from diverse backgrounds and encouraging interaction among all first-year students at Trinity College. P.R.I.D.E is a yearlong initiative, incorporating a mix of programming and outreach from the P.R.I.D.E leaders to build a community that is helpful to all first-year students” (The P.R.I.D.E Pages pamphlet). Faculty members, professors, and students hope that this program would prevent segregation and hope that students of all races would get along. P.R.I.D.E came to existence because social life at Trinity College began to pale. Moreover, issues of gender inequality and power inequality are also what drove to create this program (Spurlock-Evans). The P.R.I.D.E program is not responsible for racial tension here at Trinity College. P.R.I.D.E students are not the cause of acts of racisms on campus. Old and recent videos, newspaper, and articles where Caucasian students throw a beer bottle at a student of color, profanity and scribbles all over a student of color’s door, and theme parties where there is exclusion did not happen because of P.R.I.D.E. However, the problem with P.R.I.D.E is that it is not promoted enough to ALL first-year students here at Trinity College. As a result, only the students of color partake in this program without the participation of most Caucasian students due to the lack of publicity. Since the majority of people who participate in P.R.I.D.E are color students, it forces these color students to segregate themselves from Caucasian students before they start their first year at Trinity College. P.R.I.D.E starts on the Sunday afternoon before school year begins. There are not that many Caucasian students in P.R.I.D.E which is an issue because these programs will therefore only help students of color create their own group among themselves. Students who participate in P.R.I.D.E tend to only hang out with other students who have also participated in P.R.I.D.E. Since color students are the main ones that participate in this program, then they are only going to create bonds and friendships between themselves—with hardly any Caucasian students in the picture.

In Peter Schmidt’s “Diversity-Program Administrators Fear Challenges to Their Spending” in the Chronicles of Higher Education, it talks about diversity programs at University of Colorado at Boulder. There was a problem with managing expenditures on these programs. The article states that “the state’s flagship university had little idea how much money it spends promoting diversity and poorly manages such expenditures. University officials denied that they were spending any such money wastefully, but two Republican state representatives in Colorado have cited the report in calling for the state auditor to thoroughly examine the university’s diversity expenditures (Schmidt 1). At the University of Colorado at Boulder, money apparently is not used wisely to better create diversity on their campus. Moreover, the money that is not put into good use to better help the campus climate is a waste of resource, and it will not help fight acts of racism in college. Damon A. Williams, the University of Connecticut’s assistant vice provost for multicultural and international affairs, states, “I think many institutions are greatly at risk … Colleges have only in the past few years begun documenting the benefits of diversity … and while they generally can make good arguments that the diversity programs serve a valuable purpose, they have not done enough to track the money spent on such efforts and their results” (Schmidt 1). This connects to issue I brought forth with P.R.I.D.E in the beginning. The lack of publicity is not enough to get EVERYONE involved. This diversity program does serve a valuable purpose in our educational community. However, I feel that in order to prevent acts of racism, everyone—white and color students—needs to be involved in programs like P.R.I.D.E.

In Ben Gose’s “Do Minority Orientations Encourage Segregation?” in the Chronicles of Higher Education, it talks about minority programs in public and private institutions like Yale University, Brown University, Williams College, Pennsylvania State University, Central Michigan University, and Tufts University. The article talks about how many colleges—like the ones mention previously—have separate programs for minority students, and how these programs “have become fairly common, although they differ widely in scope” from college to college (Gose 1). Trinity College also follows these colleges’ program structure. Its P.R.I.D.E program is targeted for minorities in order to help them transition to college. I agree with the article when it states, “Critics wonder if there’s good reason to continue the programs at all. Students and professors on some campuses complain that the programs are highly politicized, and create immediate divisions between white and minority freshmen” (Gose 1). I believe that in order to prevent these divisions between white and color students, everyone needs to be involved in the same program. All Trinity College students need to participate in P.R.I.D.E in order to be equally aware of the importance of race, culture, and diversity.

Money is a great resource that, if used wisely, can better promote P.R.I.D.E in many creative, interesting, and fun ways. Karla Spurlock-Evans, the Dean of Multicultural Affairs, states that “there are gaps in the orientation programs.” If given more resources, those gaps would be filled with more activities. Moreover, I believe that the extra resource would also help better expose P.R.I.D.E to ALL incoming students. Here is my solution: P.R.I.D.E has to have an even stronger structure, if given the extra resource. With the extra resource, P.R.I.D.E will have more activities to occupy all those unfilled gaps, and it will educate the participants even more about diversity and racism. Moreover, all incoming students at Trinity need to participate in a P.R.I.D.E type program to educate themselves and learn about another student’s culture. It will help open and widen white and color students’ perspectives about each other. This will hopefully diminish acts of racism on campus because all students will understand inclusive diversity. This P.R.I.D.E type program should not be voluntary to only those who are interested. I believe that this type of program should be mandatory. It needs to be a general educational requirement because race and diversity are very important essentials to discuss and learn in college, and it will highly benefit our students beyond college after participating in a P.R.I.D.E type program. Also, during orientation week, we need to combine aspects from the P.R.I.D.E program to make orientation more beneficial for all students. Combining diversity aspects during orientation will show all students that racism is a very important topic that needs to be taken seriously. More resources in orientation can help beat fraternities on campus and help get rid of acts of racism. Hopefully in the future, you will see both color and white students’ faces on the P.R.I.D.E Pages pamphlets that show everyone promoting, respecting, and diversifying pride at Trinity College.

Bibliography:
1.Gose, Ben. “Do Minority Orientations Encourage Segregation?” The Chronicle of Higher Education, September 4, 1998, sec. Students.
2.Office of Multicultural Affairs, The P.R.I.D.E. Pages. Volume 1. Issue 1. Fall 2010.
3.Schmidt, Peter, “Diversity-Program Administrators Fear Challenges to Their Spending,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, February 2, 2007, Volume 53, Issue 22 edition, sec. Archives : Government & Politics.
4.Spurlock-Evans, Karla, P.R.I.D.E information session, Fall 2011.

About the Author: Tommy Rivera is a Hispanic male from Chicago, Illinois. He is a Posse Scholar who will graduate in 2015. He is in the first-year seminar, “Color and Money” at Trinity College.