Sean Meekins
Trinity College is far from perfect in regards to race and social class. Although there are many problems one problem of race stuck out in my head from the interviews we conducted with the sophomores. PRIDE a program for minority students at Trinity College. These students are asked to come a week earlier to get to know there way around and meet other minorities. I feel these is a problem and so did a minority student I interviewed. I feel that the Trinity campus is divided by race heavily and a lot of the burden lies in the hands of PRIDE. The fact that these students have already made friends before they arrived on campus, allows for an extra barrier to be climbed over in regards to making integrated friendships. This program might be meant to do good, but in the long run I feel it has caused an enormous race divide here at Trinity College. This program either has to be altered or removed, or else these racial cliques will be hard to break.
A possible solution to this problem is to make the program something that occurs once a week during the school year. This would allow for the students to arrive on Trinity with a total open mind and meet students from various cultures before they meet students from the same backgrounds. This would definitely break the divide. This could also let students who partake in PRIDE to bring over students who aren’t apart of PRIDE to these meeting so that more students can interact. I feel this would be a great way to open up the campus of Trinity College. It is just something that is a suggestion. There are definitely more solutions, but this one in particular could change a lot. I just feel the preconceived notion to be comfortable and interact with your race is intensified by PRIDE occurring before the school year starts.
Information I need to make this paper stronger is to go through all the NESCAC schools and see if they have a program like PRIDE and see what they entail. Go through schools from the most diverse to the least and see if their problems with race are intensified due to race-based programs. I need this information so that I can compare it to Trinity and see if this is truly a problem. I can see if diverse schools who have a good intermingling of students have different methods. I also feel that views from Trinity College students and faculty of all races on their views about PRIDE and whether it is good or not will allow for a good paper to be written.