Administration needs to better market diversity

Shane Wade

Opinion Editor

VCU lives and breathes the word “diversity.” In addition to the actual diversity of students, there’s an administrative division exclusively for “Diversity and Equity,” along with a lengthy five-year diversity plan.

But after having the word constantly pounded into you for a few months through the various brochures and university-organized events, you stop associating the word “diversity” with uniqueness and begin to instead associate it with being different.

Truthfully, VCU’s administration isn’t the first and only culprit in promoting diversity as a selling point for their university. Every school in the nation has a brochure with the word “diversity” printed in big, bold characters for the hardest of sight to see.

It’s become such a staple of collegiate advertising that it’s lost any of its past appeal or edginess. To say, or even show, that a school is diverse means little for prospective students comparing schools. With a national population trending toward a majority minority population, showing that minorities attend school here isn’t a sufficient display of a university’s diversity.

We as a society have reached a semantic tipping point. The very word “diversity” repulses us and we immediately identify it as what it truly is: coded language.

It’s highly unfortunate, but true; although interactions with different cultures provides individuals with an invaluable experience that act function as a primer for post-college life, the manner in which that fact has been has given the word an inauthentic and commercial feel. Universities like ours haven’t adequately dressed it and prepared it for public consumption. Instead, they’ve taken the intended meaning, capitalized on it and stamped it into every pamphlet possible.

The problem with using the ambiguous term that “diversity” now is is that it doesn’t relay exactly how unique our university actually is. Instead of suggesting a campus full of unique individuals with compelling experiences from varied backgrounds, the word “diversity” portrays a campus full of people that just look different from the prospective student.

It’s not adequate diversity to have students that just look different; they must also be experientially different. They must have different viewpoints, life experiences and most importantly, geographical locations.

Our diversity can not come from just minority and international students, but also out-of-state students. Decreased out-of-state tuition rates and a more relaxed residency appeals process would encourage prospective out-of-state students to attend VCU. Accepting students from the less frequented areas of Virginia would also provide the student body with a better representation of the state.

While we can talk about how VCU enrolls between 45 and 49 percent of students from non-white backgrounds, a freshman class that is 59 percent female and our community of 1,600 plus international students, there’s a better way to measure, promote and advertise our student body’s diversity: student organizations.

VCU’s student organizations, both multicultural and otherwise, should be the highlight of the brochures sent by the Office of Admissions as opposed to dry statistics and stock photos of non-white students wearing university apparel. There’s little point to having a massively diverse student populace if we’re not showing how that population is actively contributing to the campus’ culture.

Diversity within colleges has a purpose. VCU needs to expound and direct that purpose in a way that attracts the kind of students we want and need: students that are willing to get engaged in campus life, students from different socioeconomic backgrounds and students that will challenge the campus’ status quo.

While the administration has

acknowledged this fact in writing, our advertising and recruitment departments need to recognize it as well.