“Diversity” vs. “Artificial Communities” At UVA

Sometimes “diversity” doublespeak is so extreme it’s a wonder the diversiphiles don’t choke on their words. They would be ashamed and embarrassed, I think, if they realized what they were saying, but of course they aren’t because they don’t.

A good example is a recent decision by the University of Virginia to limit the housing choices available to incoming first year students, a decision dictated by the demands of “diversity” since two of the first year dorms had developed unfortunate (which means accurate) racial “stereotypes.”

Resident Staff Co-Chair Ian Flanagan explained the change, implemented this fall, is part of an “ongoing process” in which housing is “gradually narrowing” the options students have in selecting their first-year housing. He said that in previous years, students could go so far as to choose the building and floor where they wanted to live. As a result, Flanagan said, “artificial communities” were created….

“One of the goals [of the change] was to provide a much more diverse community in which to live,” Flanagan said, noting that much of what students learn in college comes from the community around them and not just the classroom experience.

He noted that stereotypes about the types of people living in McCormick Road versus Alderman Road developed over time and are “part of the reason the change was made was to eliminate the ability for those stereotypes to exist….”

So, allowing students to choose what type of dorm to live in and, often, whom to live with results in “artificial communities,” but taking away their choice and engineering politically correct “diverse” dorms results somehow in communities that are, what? Natural?

But if true learning requires the proper amount of “diversity,” why stop with the dorms? Since individual choice obviously now plays second fiddle (if that) to the necessity of “diversity,” why not engineer the racial mix of classes and majors as well?

For that matter, why should the state of Virginia continue to support public colleges that are overwhelmingly black. Virginia State Universiy, for example, in 2007 was 93.1% black, 3.3% white, 0.7% Hispanic, and 0.4% Asian/Pacific Islander. In 2006 Norfolk State University was marginally more “diverse,” with blacks making up 86% of the students and whites 7%.

By contrast James Madison University, another public university in Virginia, lists its “On-campus Enrollment by Ethnicity” as follows:

African American: 3.98%

Asian American/Pacific Isle: 4.93%

Hispanic: 2.40%

Total: 11.31%

Presumably whites have no ethnicity, but leave that aside. If “diversity” is essential to education, why shouldn’t James Madison students be forced to attend Virginia State or Norfolk State, and students at those schools forced to attend James Madison, or demographically similar institutions in both cases? Why should the state, that is, continue to allow students at these (and similar) state-supported institutions to be segregated into the “artificial communities” produced by their own choices when it could, as UVa’s new housing program demonstrates, provide them all with the myriad benefits of “diversity” by simply depriving them of the ability to make the “stereotyped” choices they have, unfortunately, been making?

Say What? (1)

  1. Will T. Power September 8, 2008 at 8:14 am | | Reply

    Bring back busing!

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