At least this article focuses on the perspective of the students — they’re pissed off. But hey, I recognized a bunch of the students they highlighted!
I also think one student made a particularly good point. Paradoxically, with great diversity comes great isolation.
Mercedese Young Man said she often feels alone on the campus and in the western Minnesota town.
“I feel isolated,” said Young Man, who is in her first semester at Morris. “Before (Sviggum) said all of that I was going to my counselors and telling them I was having a hard time adjusting to being here.”
Young Man, who sat for nearly an hour by herself in the school café seating area, said she transferred to Morris because of its supposed diversity, but she said that’s not the case. Officially Morris can boast of a robustly diverse population – 41% students of color, of that 32% Native American of a total student population of 1,068 – but Young Man disputed those numbers.
“There are just a handful of Native students here and all from separate tribes,” said Young Man, who is from Oglala, South Dakota. “In several of my classes I’m the only person … maybe one other … person of color.”
The raw statistics tends to lump all these students into one mass — “students of color” and “Native American” — but they all see themselves as something far more specific. I’ve known students who are Navajo and Delaware, as well as the regional Lakota and Dakota peoples. There are also Hmong and Somali and Nigerian and Latino and Filipino students here, and just sweeping them into a pile and calling them our diverse brown students is insulting and inadequate.
Bugger Sviggum, we should just listen to the students and follow their suggestions.
To the point of UMN Morris’ declining enrollment, Strukel and Kadlec may have unintentionally offered up a marketing campaign for the university.
“We’re unique here because we’re so separated from the fast-paced world. Here it’s who’s around you; that’s who you got,” said Kadlec. “There’s no Target or Walmart here to take my money so I’m forced to be here on campus with my friends; and that’s not bad at all.”
What ever happened to the societal concept of focusing on becoming a diverse ‘community’, honoring individual cultures, races, etc. but also sharing all the positive characteristics and cooperating?
And, having studied elements of sociology, I know huge cities, with all their predatory corporations, are not an ideal environment.
My home town of Umeå is at pop.100,000 not a small town, but not a bit one either.
Our young 1960s University has generated one Nobel winner, Emmanuelle Charpebtier, who mentioned there were less distractions and more peaceful working here.
Mebbe Morris can generate a Nobel laurelate, someone who studies under PZ right now?
Spell check strikes again.
Umeå is not a “bit” town*, but it is above all not a “big” town.
*Godzilla has not even munched slightly on our town.