Rebekah Nathan’s “Community and Diversity” focuses on the changing definition of the word community on college campuses and how that change affects the way students spend their free time and interact with other students. While campus directors set up and promote campus life community with good intentions of providing every student with interesting activities and helping first-time students make the jump from home-life to college-life, big communities usually only take away from the little free time left in the day and make students feel more isolated and alone. The demand on students to participate in every campus activity in order to form a healthy campus life community pushes students further away from organized groups and makes forming small, exclusive social networks even more desirable.
At the beginning of her essay “Community and Diversity,” Nathan notes most students only feel a sense of togetherness in three areas: “age, pop culture, and a handful of (recent) historical events” (Nathan 101)—areas that do not exactly function as ties that bind. Even as campuses pour more resources and energy into trying to involve students and to create a functioning community, many students instead opt to reserve time for themselves and small groups of friends, forsaking the large, time-restrictive group for networks of “individualism, spontaneity, freedom, and choice” (Nathan 105). While these egocentric groups often overlap, they rarely have identical matches, as each student creates his or her own network on a basis of proximity and similar interests. Many of the groups are also either entirely comprised of a single ethnicity or include only one or two persons of different races.
Although the large, organized form of campus...
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...s purpose and motivation—to provide social structure, to educate, or to merely retain the majority of the freshman class? While a large-scale community can provide students with multiple activities with which to fill their days, it simply cannot offer each student much needed personal care and attention. Although Nathan conducts brilliant observational research in her essay, “Community and Diversity,” she merely scratches the surface of the situation, reporting on the evidence around her, but not reaching the heart of problem. Students today require a deeper understanding from other students—an understanding they cannot have in a large community. Instead of waiting for small-scale university programming to come along, students have to take matters, and their best interests, into their own hands and create small, private networks that cater to their individual needs.
“College campuses are not dominated by widespread racial/ethnic segregation and the racial/ethnic clustering that does occur isn’t impeding intergroup contact.” (578, Hoeffner and Hoeffner). Throughout the essay, the writer continues to provide facts and sources on the information that diversity is not a problem on college campuses. She quotes evidence that states that college students are getting a “variety of positive educational outcomes that result from being educated in a diverse environment.” (578, Hoeffner and Hoeffner).
...e term “empty and sentimental…and the extraordinary power one can gain through speaking/writing in an actual community is ignored” (Harris 134-135). He brings up Bartholomae, as his work shows that universities have many communities that “shift subtly” and are always changing. Bartholomae says universities are along the lines of Harris’ discussion of public. Lastly, Harris worries in teaching students in a particular common way, as it will lead to agreeing with everything their professors tell them, which he argues against. Students should be working toward some well-defined version of composition. He doesn’t want students to stop being who they are. To Harris, community does not mean consensus. He offers the metaphor of a city, allowing for consensus and conflict, rather than the idea of one utopian community because he doesn’t want no Jesuses in his Promise Land.
The essay, “Diversity: The Value of Discomfort” is an argument written by Ronald L Leibowitz in which he addresses a group of graduates about the value of diversity in college. To me, diversity means the unique backgrounds which influence people’s thoughts, ideas, and opinions. Each of the factors in an individual’s background makes them unique, and creates an important facet of our communities. However, we need to recognize and understand diversity, and simply “celebrating” it is not enough—we must embrace it in our colleges, workplaces, neighborhoods, and larger societies.
Being new to a college campus, I've learned to adjust. I’ve stepped outside my comfort zone and learned to explore various outlets. Little did I know that the college culture didn’t fall too far from the typical high school environment. Subcultures, or what I’d like to call clicks, seemed to be something that transcends from each level of schooling. In college this subculture is known as the Greek system and it is one of the major outlets students use for socializing.
First, I will discuss the influences of different definitions of diversity in cultural unification. The major problem concerning this issue is that many people differ in the real meaning of the concept and how they view their personal involvement. Brook argues that “we do not really care about diversity all that much in America, even though we talk about it a great deal” (306). However, they are the general, erroneous interpretations of diversity that are really creating this wrong image of indifference. According to Kira Hudson Banks in her research entitled “A Qualitative Investigation of Students’ Perceptions of Diversity,” many people defined diversity as race and do not include other types of diversity (153).
As the high school chapter is coming to a close, many students have to make a decision that will affect the rest of their lives. Hopefully, for many that decision is to enroll in a college and attain a higher education. However, as tuition costs rise, students have to take a second look at their options for a better future. A community college is that second look for many because it is the less expensive option. From 2007-2009, enrollment for community colleges has increased by 24 percent (“College costs and the CPI”). Students aren’t choosing a college for educational purposes because they are overwhelmed by financial issues. They are attending community colleges so they will be able to graduate with a lower debt. Some seniors have wanted to attend a certain university all their life and they work toward that goal through grade school; however, they are hindered by soaring tuition for that college. Students should be able to attend a private university if they mee...
Nathan performed many observational studies that compelled her to voice the disparity between the formal and informal areas of college life. The "undergraduate worldview" (112) is composed of an in-class, intellectual side that goes vastly unnoticed beside the behemoth that entails living in an environment filled with thousands of young adults. The partying, dorm life, and other non-school sanctioned aspects of living in unsupervised quarters encompass both a student’s time and mental capacities. She found that a majority of conversations surrounded topics of sports, the opposite sex, and TV shows. They find solace in the communal suffrage of going to class and seldom discuss how difficult classes can be. This demeans the intellectual side of college by turning the topic against cl...
As an individual stuck amidst a foundation known for its propensity to breed social congruity, college has opened my eyes to numerous distinctive reasons why individuals decide to act in ways they wouldn't regularly act. Since they ordinarily aren't certain of their character, adolescents are more inclined to similarity than others. In the most essential structure, college is tormented with congruity through the generalizations that learners seek after and explore different avenues regarding trying to uncover their personality. There are two sorts of Conformity: the kind that makes you do your errands when your father authorizes you to, and the less than great kind in which you aimlessly take after the thoughts and tenets of an inner circle or gathering, without addressing the negative impacts it has upon yourself and the improvement of whatever remains of public opinion. Conformity is basic in that people strive for a feeling of strength and acknowledgement in their lives. As a result of this need, “we therefore figure out how to fit in with principles of other individuals. What's more the more we see others carrying on in a certain manner or settling on specific choices, the more we feel obliged to stick to this same pattern.” Despite the freedoms we are supposed to have in American society most adolescents find it difficult to have their own identity.
When diversity is being discussed, there are a plethora of ideas that are associated with it. Whether people are talking being put on a waitlist for college, about people of color, or about representation in the media, the subject of diversity is not rare. Recently, the conversation of diversity has become more common because colleges want to demonstrate that they have diversified campus. How would diversity on campus be defined? Most importantly, diversity is more than having an extraordinary personality. Race, gender, sexuality, and social status are a few of the superfluous traits that make an individual unique in a college’s eyes. In Sophia Kerby’s article, “10 Reasons Why We Need Diversity on College Campuses”, she notes that, while there has already been an effort to diversify high schools and middle schools, accepting students of different backgrounds is not as apparent in higher education (1) . A university desires to diversify its campus in order to benefit the students that are attending the college. Students are not only likely to improve
We can all agree, educators and future educators alike, that teaching students is so much more than just presenting information to them. There is more to learning than only speaking. We’ve all had those teachers who were brilliant in their subject area, but not brilliant in making the students know the information. These are not true teachers; they are only smart. They teach in one way only, and doesn’t believe in individualized instruction, even though we all know that “low-income students and students of color tend to feel less “connected” to their schools than affluent and Anglo students, and that older students feel less connected than younger ones” (Schaps). As a future educator, sometimes I fear that I will become like one of these teachers, and I want to make sure that each of my students enjoy coming in class to learn, and is able to apply what they’ve learned to their unique lives. So for this inquiry project, I’ve decided to focus on classroom community. I believe that every great teacher establishes this concept in his/her classroom; without this concept, learning cannot happen. In this paper, I will define classroom community, discuss different ways to implement it in every classroom, and show the results of making an effort to keep it in your classroom.
This source will equip the argument for utilizing diversity as an educational apparatus that supports student development and learning. The showcase of the impact of diverse student engagement will definitely be useful for providing a strong reasoning for showcasing how the experience of students in the US schooling system shapes the educational experiences of diversified student groups. Dixson, A., & Rousseau, C. (2005). And we are still not saved: critical race theory in education ten years later.... ...
Anderson, M, L, Taylor, H, F. (2008). Sociology. Understanding a Diversity Society. Thomson Higher Education. Belmont. (USA). Fourth Edition.
Due to the many meanings of the word community, people have learned to substitute community for other words. Most of the definitions are common has in a society linked by common interests but, would you really say a buffalo community? Of course not, you would say a herd of buffalo. Unfortunately, community is really only used if someone were to be talking about where people live. Even the meanings of community don’t announce themselves when people use the word. Working with a service agency (YouVote), community is used quite a bit. We worked a lot with the community of Michigan Sate University. Would Michigan State University students all have common interests? We all have the common interest to come here but, not common degrees, or classes. If it’s different at MSU would it be different everywhere else?
College is an exhilarating time, especially for the students at the University of Iowa. Young adults are finally out of the house and given the freedom to do whatever, whenever. They have the option of going to new places and staying out late, all without the need of parental consent. This is the time for discovering new interests, meeting new people, learning, and finding oneself. College may sound like the perfect place, however, not everyone is excited for this change. Many students struggle adapting to this new environment full of choices. Not only are they having to leave their families that they have lived with for the past eighteen years, but they are also having to leave behind their homes, pets, schools, and friends. To top it all
Garcia, E. (2002). Student cultural diversity: Understanding and meeting the challenge (3rd Ed.). New York, NY: Houghton Mifflin Company.