As a college student who attended 2 large universities that pride themselves on the diversity of the student body I am curious, who is the administration considering a minority?
When you look at the entire class there is obvious disparities between certain ethnic groups and others but does this catch all minorities. Is ethnicity the most important aspect of creating a diverse campus.
Growing up as a white female people assume I have no comprehension of what it is like to be singled out because of a physcial appearance. However, unfortunately I believe myself to be one of the worst kind of minorities in college right now, a minority where there is no support groups or recognition of being a minorty so we are left on our own to figure out how to get through college.
As a microbiology major I can safely say I am the largest minority in my major. The number of females is relatively split between males but being a white blonde female is rare at my university. I have been told by research professors that I am the cheerleader of my research group, not because of my inexperience in research or lack of effort, but simply because my physical appearance and extracurricular activities promote the negative connantation. At the end of the quarter, when I had accomplished more of the research goal than any of the other members, I went back to this professor and said "By cheerleader you meant that I was the leader right"
Besides my physical minority status, I have dealt with being a first generaation college student not just in my immediate family but in my extended family as well. Going to college is a different experience that no one could relate with. I had to work during finals week through a family business, was never given a break during intense work load times and still had to manage extracurricular activities for a medical school application.
Walking through the quad I was never approached by a club, FIRST GENERATION, or BLONDE SCIENTIST, instead I navigated through the maze of college, thankfully only stumbling and not crashing.
The point of this blog is to get a better understanding of what other students feel about the minority status or if I am again a minority in my views.
I think diversity on campus includes people of different ethnicities, socio-economic backgrounds, people who are first generation college students, different interests, skills, and people from different regions.
I don't know that I'd consider you a minority at your college. I would call you underrepresented in cultural organizations. At my school, the largest ethnic group is asians and the next largest is whites. There are at least 15 different asian cultural orgs, but none for white people. So I can't join a club full of people that automatically share my same cultural background.
I would call you a minority in your major and your field of study. Women are quite underrepresented in science research.
Common sense is as rare as genius. ~Emerson
Colorado November Ballot Measure to Legally Define a Fertilized Egg as a Person
This just goes to show that we are promoting race and sex seperation and furthing the discriminatopry aspects of our nation through clubs and Orgs.
At my school, we had a race and human relations called 'color me human' it seemed to be better since it did not single out any one or inflate anybodys problems. It only sought to seek and destroy the evil discriminators.
Good luck and good post and We will be your support group.
~T
All truths are easy to understand once discovered; The point is to discover them ~Galileo
The previous comment made me think of a bake sale that went on at my university. It was hosted by a group against affirmative action. The sold the same cookies but at different costs depending on your ethnicity. They were trying to make a point about affirmative action and I just thought it was an interesting story to post here. The administration did not find the bake sale appropriate and stopped them but it did cause quite a contraversy for awhile.