Category: Uncategorized

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. I am interested in researching college judiciary procedures in order to understand why after hate incidents have occurred on campuses the college/university doesn’t always get to see the follow ups that come with these incidents.

The first step to solving and stopping  hate crimes 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.

Bibliography:

United States. Responding to Hate Crimes and Bias-Motivated Incidents on College/University Campuses. Washington, D.C.?: U.S. Dept. of Justice, Community Relations Service, 2000. Print.

-Responding to Hate Crimes and Bias-Motivated Incidents on College/University Campuses are responses from students, college administrators, civil rights organizations, etc regarding the way in which colleges are handling hate crimes. They also offer possible solutions to this problem and recommend to unite with other colleges against these crimes .

Downey, John P. “Hate Crimes and Violence on College and University Campuses.” 1999 40.1 (1999): 3-9. Print.

Gueve Ataie
Revised Proposal
The problem with race at Trinity College as well as many other places in the world is that many people do not recognize that there is a problem and will not speak up when they see an act of racism occur.1 On top of that people need to understand the factual advantages and disadvantages of their race in today’s society. White’s inherently have more power and privilege than African American’s because of their race while Latinos and African American’s and Latinos are still, to a certain extent, racially oppressed.2 This is a problem in today’s society and this transfers down many college communities including Trinity’s. The frat life and many social scenes on campus don’t seem to include the minority population of Trinity very much and this is a problem. There needs to be a racially equal social scene on campus which means that everyone feels comfortable integrating and joining different friend groups. In relation to that the frats, parties, and other events should make people of all races and backgrounds feel equally comfortable to take part in.
The solution to the problems regarding race at Trinity lies within different organizations on campus. PRIDE is a huge part of making minority students feel more welcome on campus but PRIDE needs some adjustments in order to be even more helpful. PRIDE needs to be a support system for minority students but at the same time not restrict them to staying attached to PRIDE because that will in turn cause the reverse effect than what is desired. Although PRIDE does welcome white students they should make it more known so that white students don’t feel uncomfortable joining. On top of all this there should be more classes on the subject of race in school so that whites do understand what the minority students are going through and realize that for the white students it is easier to fit in than for students of color2. There needs to be more effort on the schools part to get white students involved with racial diversity on campus because no matter how much PRIDE tries to make minority students feel comfortable they will never be completely at ease until they feel like they fit in with the majority of the students on campus.

1Trinity College, “Protesting Hate at Trinity College, April 2011,” College Archives – Documents (April 1, 2011): 4.
Discusses the occurrence at Trinity College last spring where there was a hate crime on a student of color and how the college campus was affected.

2Helen Fox, When race breaks out: conversations about race and racism in college classrooms (Peter Lang, 2009).
This article talks about specific races in college and how they are treated and certain possible solutions to some of the problems.

Casey Tanner & James DiBlasi
Color and Money
November, 2011
Paper Three:
The admissions process is complicated and extraneous to all students. The difficult decision of choosing where to spend the next four invaluable years of school is based solely on the way people can display themselves. Criterions such as grades, standardized test scores, community service, etc all have an impact on the decision process of applications. However, many colleges and universities place a heavy amount of the decision based on the conditions many cannot control. Factors like financial status, alumni connection and racial background play a vital role in who is accepted and who is denied. As we have seen in our own simulation in class, it is often those with advantages in these backgrounds that are accepted over the real qualified students.
Trinity College should revise its application process to enhance the consistency of applicants by evaluating students on their future potential rather than assessing them on their past. The qualifications of an applicant should be looked in terms of factors that can controlled by students opposed to those aspects that cannot. These sections should compare the success students had up until high school given both their educational and socioeconomic background. Privileged individuals do have an advantage in the admissions process. However, this system should be set in place to minimize the influence these privileges have in the final decision and evaluate them based on their success given certain advantages. Although it may seem impossible to make a perfect system to determine who is accepted and who isn’t, there should be revisions to the current process to provide more consistency.

Annotated Bibliography

1. Bryan G. Nance, “For a Fairer Admissions Process, Read Between the Lines,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, September 19, 2010, sec. Diversity in Academe, http://chronicle.com/article/For-a-Fairer-Admissions/124444/.

The author discusses the problems with the current way the admissions process is set up. He discusses the need for a more updated process that looks below the surface of standardized test scores, and instead looks for qualities that show future potential.

2. Richard Kahlenberg, “The Troubling Rise in Early Admissions,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, Innovations, October 29, 2010, http://chronicle.com/blogs/innovations/the-troubling-rise-in-early-admissions/27737.

This article discusses the advantages of legacies and those that apply early in the admissions process. The privileges of coming from a higher economic background serve as another benefit in comparison to those who cannot apply either early decision because of the binding aspect with the college.

3. Tom Bartlett and Karin Fischer, “Race Is a Factor in Admissions at a Third of Colleges, Survey Finds,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, October 10, 2003, Volume 50, Issue 7 edition, sec. Students.

This article talks about the recent Supreme Court ruling to allow colleges to be awareness of race. However, despite governmental changes, this ruling did not alter the admissions process in colleges showing that race had already contributed in the process.

4. Tom Bartlett and Karin Fischer, “Unknown Factor Hampers Minority Students’ Performance in College, Study Finds,” The Chronicle of Higher Education, June 6, 2003, Volume 49, Issue 39 edition, sec. Students.

Studies have found that minority students are less likely to succeed in college because of the structural and cultural make up of college universities. The configuration of college institutions is “geared primarily to white culture”; making the transition for first generation college students more difficult.

5. Anne West, Hazel Pennell, and Philip Noden, “School Admissions: Increasing Equity, Accountability and Transparency,” British Journal of Educational Studies 46, no. 2 (June 1, 1998): 188-200.

This paper goes into depth about the needed reforms to the college admissions process as well as its impact on in universities. In order to provide consistency and equality amongst all applicants, changes need to be made by looking at an ideal admissions process and making it applicable to today’s process.

Gueve Ataie
On Trinity College’s campus there are many problems regarding minority students fitting into the social scene and social groups on campus. At Trinity there is a group called PRIDE and its goal is to make minority students transition from high school to college be smoother. The PRIDE group brings many minority students together at the beginning of the school year in order to make them feel more comfortable on campus and feel like they have a group that they fit into. The group almost sets the minority students on a different start than most of the other students on campus by automatically putting them in a group of friends rather than having them make friends on their own like most of the other freshmen. This is the problem with PRIDE, it starts off by separating minority freshman students from the other freshmen on campus and doesn’t give them opportunity to join friends groups with many different people like most other students on campus. This in turn causes the students not in PRIDE to unconsciously exclude PRIDE students because they feel as if they already have their friend group and social scene and do not want to intermingle with the other students.
As a solution to this problem PRIDE must change the way that it tries to make minority students feel more comfortable. PRIDE must do what it is doing now and make minority students feel comfortable and welcome when they first arrive to Trinity but also allow them the space and opportunity to incorporate with the whole student body. Right now PRIDE schedules too much of the students’ first experiences here which takes away from the students’ opportunities to mingle with people in their dorm, floor, and grade to figure out who their friends group will become. PRIDE should be something that minority students know is there if they need it but it should encourage them to first try to make friends the way they regularly would rather than just putting the students in a group with other minorities and secluding them from the rest of the student body. If PRIDE wants the Trinity campus to be a diverse campus then it should allow for white students and minority students to have more opportunities to interact when they first arrive to campus like social gatherings amongst all freshman students rather than just the minorities. If PRIDE continues to put minorities in their own bubble when they arrive to campus they will always feel left out from the rest of the students because in reality they are left out, not because they are minorities but because they were never given good chances to make friends with students outside of the pride group.
The events that occurred in the spring of the last school year caused many divisions among race on Trinity’s campus and this was not good for making minorities feeling included. That feeling may have been brought over to this year as well and the Trinity student body will never benefit from these feelings. Trinity’s PRIDE should research and explore what similar groups to it at other schools are doing that are proven to be very effective in integrating and making minorities feel included on campus. On top of that, Pride can see if there are any information groups that can be created to let the white students understand how the minority students feel on campus so that events like the ones from last spring can be prevented from now on.

1. The Problem
The problem that i see on Trinity’s campus specifically regarding race, race is not discussed or it is ignored in order to avoid discussion on the subject. There is this mindset at not only Trinity but other locations as well, to not dive into topics specifically about race. This is why i believe that racial events occur at Trinity as they happen. Because people are unaware of their peers and the racial experiences that they have had. In my own experiences people say things because of what they have experience but also because of who they think is around.
2. The Solution
Race is a delicate subject and one that will make even the most composed person uncomfortable. However, people are only comfortable with what they have been exposed to regularly what is a habit for them. I believe that in order for racial charged events to be stopped at Trinity people have to interact with each other about race, their own experiences and whatever else stems from that. I believe that all people at some point in their schooling or year here at Trinity should have an experience like those students in the movie SKIN DEEP. To begin understanding i strongly believe that however uncomfortable it can make people, people should have a deep discussion on the effect that race has had on their lives. So that people will be aware of those on campus around them and possibly understand and adapt their behavior to their peers.
3. Information
In order to write a paper on this topic i believe that i will need information about how colleges react to positive and negative events regarding race. I will need this because all colleges although they have similar goals handle racial events differently. Also, i believe i will need information on students first hand experiences on race and their opinions on the matter. Lastly, i believe that information on the different programs like PRIDE and mono-racialur frats and frats in general would be useful for my paper as well. This and possibly more would help be to develop a strong paper.

Problem:

Based on student experiences and the research we have already conducted as a seminar, I would offer that one of the major causes of issues related to race and social class at Trinity would be an ineffective First-Year Program. Currently, first-year seminars exist to acquaint freshmen with other freshmen of like interests, as well as to strengthen skills necessary to manage a college workload. However, though people might enjoy the wide variety of seminar topics, which can range from the Beatles to energy policy, few topics pertain specifically to the Trinity community.

Solution:

I would propose that faculty and staff re-vamp the First-Year Program to include more seminars like this one that would actively engage students with the campus and the issues that occur here. By encouraging students to examine and provide possible explanations and improvements for the current state of campus interactions and initiatives, students are made to feel like an integral part of the Trinity community much sooner, regardless of race or social class. Also, such seminars will allow students to feel more comfortable with addressing discrepancies on campus if the need arises later. Students will really feel as if they truly play a role in shaping the campus community because the institution will literally demonstrate how they can do so from the moment they arrive.

Additional Information:

In order to create a stronger paper, I will need more information about first-year seminars, past and present, to verify the number of Trinity-centered seminars that exist or have existed. It would also be helpful to acquire some syllabi to see how much seminars connect their topics to campus happenings. It would also be helpful to find some guidelines somewhere that outline the intended purpose of the first-year program, as well as student responses to see if it has fulfilled those expressed goals. It would be interesting to hear the ways that the first-year program influences students’ college experience in actuality, if it does at all anymore.

Race on campus is a problem because we make it one. The fact that people are taught to accept different people’s races instead of the person themselves. Although race plays a factor in a person’s upbringing it does not always define a person. People on campus are taught to watch what they say and to not ask ignorant questions but to just not say anything at all. I believe that is the problem, everyone is taught to keep it inside, but how do you learn without asking any questions? The problem on campus is that there are many people who are ignorant to other races and are taught not to ask but to just accept without reason. Humans are naturally curios, and often one would not be able to know anything without experience or asking questions. The problem is that people are scared or told not to ask questions so they remain ignorant, which is the cause for most racist comments.

A possible solution can be open discussions at cultural houses, where anyone is allowed to come and learn about another culture or ask questions they may have. These meetings would be judgment free and open to anyone willing to learn. But then how do you tech those who do not want to be taught? That is where the campus needs to come together as a whole. If a daily email with a fun fact came out about a different race everyday with the daily emails or there is a question box where anonymous questions may come in and be answered.  For every question there is an answer even if it not completely clear. There should be a campus wide campaign to end ignorance.

The evidence I need here is answers from the interviews and my own personal experience. While have been on campus a short while I have already learned a lot about the cultural dynamics on campus. Race is such a big deal on campus but it is not often spoken about. It can be the white elephant in the room at times. I could also use Tatum’s book to breakdown the mindset of people on campus and why the dynamic may be the way it is.

First Proposal:
Trinity College—the community of our faculty members, the school of our Professors, and the home of our students—has been long affected by issues regarding racism, sexism, violence, sexual abuse, and sexual orientation. However, racism has to be the main key problem here at Trinity College. The “Color and Money” freshmen seminar has recently conducted interviews from students here at this 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 at campus than social class. Students here at Trinity are equally conscious of their social class. However, race is whole different story.
Trinity College has a special program for incoming international students called PRIDE (insert full meaning of acronym later). Students and faculty members thought that this program would be better help their non-white students get accustomed to Trinity College where the majority population is white. Here’s the problem: PRIDE forces these non-white students to segregate themselves from white students before they come to campus. PRIDE is an early program right before college starts. PRIDE has helped these international students create their own group among themselves. Students who participate in PRIDE tend to only hang out with other students who have also participated in PRIDE. Some students do not even bother getting out of their comfort zone and start meeting other people who didn’t participate in this program.
Here’s my solution: PRIDE has to have a whole different structure. Half of the PRIDE program has to be white and the other half has to be non-white. We need to pair each of them, so they can get comfortable getting to know someone else’s culture. I really don’t know what really happens in PRIDE, but perhaps changing activities and the agenda around to get more international students be comfortable approaching people they do not know from the people they already know in PRIDE. Also, during orientation week, we can find other ways to better communicate these different type of students before segregation started becoming apparent and start taking place in their college lives. I want to get more information of PRIDE. Their current structure, the amount of people who take part of it, the kind of people who take part of it, what type of discussions are disscused, and such.

Race is a topic that continues to come up at Trinity. Whether it is being talked about in the class room or at a lunch table in Mather, every student has heard of racial issues on campus. Race is brought to the front of everyones mind the very first day a student steps on campus, the Pride program makes sure of that, but making ever student aware that race is an issue from the start is a mistake. Race is a problem in a social aspect at Trinity, but there are a number of ways to fix it.

The college should instead have everyone arrive on the same day so everyone of different races mix with each other, rather then the minorities arriving first and forming groups with just minority students. There has also been a lot of talk recently about doing away the fraternities for cultural houses instead. Cultural houses exist already on campus, but very few people who are not of the culture of the house do not every visit them. The cultural house should instead open up on Saturday night in a similar way the fraternities do, and allow students from every race come and socialize.

After the incidents of last Spring our campus was divided, and it seemed like it was almost a race battle between the minorities and the white students. Instead of bringing to light everything that make us different the school should instead try to remind us of how similar we all are. There is bound to be another incident where a student make a regrettable decision, or says something racial, that is the reality at every college, but this one students views do no represent the views of the students on Trinity.

1. The Problem

The issue I am interested in addressing is the prevalence of cliques on Trinity’s campus.  Noticeably, students generally spend time with the same group of friends daily.  This problem brings about other social repercussions such as the feeling of exclusion experienced by those not “in” with a specific clique.  Our study of race and social class at Trinity along with observations of day-to-day interactions on campus show that students tend to associate predominantly with members of similar race and/or social class.

2. Possible Solution

As demonstrated in one of the interviews, the PRIDE program has ample room for improvement.  The student that shared her experience and reaction to this program expressed her distaste in the way it made her anticipate interactions with wealthier white students that were to arrive on campus later that week.  This creates a feeling of discomfort prior to the start of the academic year.  Also, a way of integrating students of different social classes is necessary.

3. Information Needed

In order to further explore this topic, I need information about the PRIDE program.  In addition, I want to compare other colleges’ means of addressing the issue of the integration of multicultural students into a predominately white setting.  I also plan to compare the racial diversity rates of the other schools in Trinity’s league.  In terms of social class, I would like to learn more about the amount of funding other colleges comparable to Trinity dedicate to financial aid.  I am wondering whether or not other colleges are facing the same problem of the diminishing middle class within its student body.  I would like to collaborate with Lucy Robinson on this project.

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.

Casey Tanner
Color and Money
November, 2011
Paper Three Paragraphs:
The admissions process is complicated and extraneous to all students. The difficult decision of choosing where to spend the next four invaluable years of school is based solely on the way people can display themselves. Criterions such as grades, standardized test scores, community service, etc all have an impact on the decision process of applications. However, many colleges and universities place a heavy amount of the decision based on the conditions many cannot control. Factors like financial status, alumni connection and racial background play a vital role in who is accepted and who is denied. As we have seen in our own simulation in class, it is often those with advantages in these backgrounds that are accepted over the real qualified students.
Trinity College should revise its application process to enhance the consistency of applicants who get accepted and those who do not. The qualifications of an applicant should be looked so that the sections of an application that can be determined by the students are weighted more than those areas that cannot be determined. Privileged individuals do have an advantage in the admissions process. However, there should be a system set in place to minimize the influence these privileges have in the final decision. Although it may seem impossible to make a perfect system to determine who is accepted and who isn’t, there should be revisions to the current process to provide more consistency.
To find a more efficient way to structure the admissions process, we will need additional information to help revise our current process. Factual evidence taken from our personal admissions process is a definitely necessity to see how our admissions staff makes decisions. The books we have read in class like Creating a Class and readings regarding admissions policies will also be critical to look at during this paper. With this information, we can design a stronger and more consistent way to accept students to Trinity College.

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.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AjBRjzE7iN16dGpSbS1sNGJCQkxDSGlHby1hbnpaMkE&hl=en_US

[Note to Tommy: I followed the link above to a sheet titled “Tommy’s ratings” but I did not see your individual ratings anywhere in that spreadsheet. If you stored them somewhere else, please contact me. -Jack D]

Here’s the link

The bold numbers are the ones that stood out. Any student that had a total score of six or above was better than the rest. These final numbers were based on overall total averages of ACT, SAT scores, GPA, Race, and Extra Curricular Activity. None of the data had any financial interference.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0AvLSqMSCggFHdE1odTNrU3FMeFlyTVVzVnNHRVZlQ0E&hl=en_US