University should emphasize diversity
>>Print ViewPublication Date: 09/26/2006
sponsored by
On Saturday morning, Kelly Richardson, a junior in the School of Management, helped coordinate a meeting in the Black Cultural Center with Purdue president Martin Jischke and Provost Sally Mason. This meeting was to discuss problems with diversity around campus.
Richardson told the Exponent that it's important for all people at the University to realize how essential diversity is to Purdue's growth.
Even though the University has done things to help raise diversity in the past, there is always more to do. It's going to be hard to get a very diverse group of people to Purdue because of its location. Not only is the majority of the United States white, but so is the majority of Indiana. It's going to be hard to get diverse groups of people to go to school where the vast majority of students are different.
There is always more diversity in more urbanized areas, which poses another problem for Purdue. The West Lafayette area is very rural in general, and the closest urbanized city is Indianapolis, which is not the most diverse city in the world, to say the least.
In addition to that, a lot of the diversity efforts around campus seem to focus on gender rather than race. There is always a push to get more women in the engineering and science-related majors. There continue to be more and more women getting involved in those subjects, so now it's time to focus on race.
Even though diversity has increased in the past, there can always be more of a push to increase Purdue's diversity. Attempting to get more diverse in terms of race as opposed to gender will have an impact. In addition, focusing on majors like those in the College of Liberal Arts could help increase diversity because those seem to be the least diverse majors in the University.
It's getting better, but there can always be something to work toward in terms of diversity.