I recently participated in a panel held by Georgetown University’s chapter of the NAACP and met with a couple of students who attend Howard University. The conversation ended that night with an understanding that all schools — whether historically black or predominately white — have room for improvement when it comes to diversity. I later chatted with one of the panelists, and he joked that the quality of a Georgetown education is inferior because of its failure to promote pluralism in its academics. Of course, I defended our school by reminding the panelist that Howard does not have such a requirement either, but it occurred to me that he was right.
It astonishes me that many of us will go on to graduate and work on Capitol Hill or other places in Washington, D.C., without having basic knowledge about its inhabitants. So many of us will travel around the world by virtue of our careers with narrow minds and without an understanding of the culture and customs we will encounter. It is a rather archaic thought that, just by living in this bubble for four years, we would be prepared to understand others unlike ourselves. It is even more amazing that the opportunities to be pluralists exist on campus, but it is up to the individual to decide to leave their zone of comfort and engage them.
The lack of understanding we have for each other at Georgetown blares every day we coexist here. Instead of learning about each other, we sometimes are just given the opportunity to ignore the presence of others unlike ourselves. There is a clear curiosity that we have for the unknown, as apparent by the commentary left on the Facebook page Georgetown Confessions. Everything from “1580: I refer to the area in Leo’s where all the black kids sit as the ‘diversity section’” to “1550: Whenever I go to Leo’s, I purposely sit as far away from the section with all the black people. They are just too freaking loud!” shows us that the so-called Pluralism in Action event during New Student Orientation is simply not enough.
Going forward, I feel that there is work to be done on the part of administration to ensure that these views are expressed openly and honestly so that we can grow as a community. Some students, namely a group calledCura Personalis, have suggested the idea of embedding diversity into the curriculum. Their ideas are ambitious but have been met with much opposition from administrators and students alike. These goals need to be at the top of our administration’s agenda but perhaps in a way that is logistically simpler to enact.
Indeed, Georgetown could be a lot more functional if a course that focused on unity as opposed to the current division were embedded in general education requirements. Implementation would be simple: perhaps a one-credit course, which met once a week, for all freshmen to take. The course could be taught by professors who are passionate about pluralism — and that should not be limited to faculty of color. Ultimately, it is up to the university to understand that Georgetown should not be considered to consist of individuals from two worlds, those who fit in the mainstream — and arguably closed-minded — culture and those who do not. It is also up to its leaders to understand that just like racial- and gender-based integration, promoting pluralism is not something that will just happen on its own.
Khadijah Davis is a sophomore in the School of Nursing & Health Studies. THE ETHNICITY OF FEMININITY appears every other Tuesday.
