Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

Georgetown University’s Newspaper of Record since 1920

The Hoya

CIESEMIER & SQUIRES: Facilitate Georgetown’s Culture of Diversity

One of the bittersweet joys of senior year is seeing your campus evolve without you; watching younger students, with as much love and passion for this place as you have, take steps to improve the quality of experience here, and feeling proud to watch this change happen.

This is how we feel about the recent demands for a diversity requirement at Georgetown. We have read The Last Campaign for Academic Reform petition calling for Georgetown to include a series of courses on diversity and various types of oppression as a part of its core curriculum and we commend such a proposal.

We believe it is an incredibly important addition to the academic curriculum for all university students and especially timely in light of recent events related to race nationally and on campus.

On the one hand, the current lack of a diversity requirement is a glaring reminder of the immense progress Georgetown still needs to make toward ensuring that students of all identities feel welcome here.

But at the same time, this movement to have the diversity requirement passed is an encouraging sign of Georgetown students’ drive to constantly question the status quo and improve it.

We believe the diversity requirement is an excellent and necessary step toward progress, but it is not enough. To really improve Georgetown — to ensure that it is no longer the type of place where students regularly report bias incidents committed against them — we as a student body must extend the principles of the diversity requirement beyond the classroom and into our social interactions.

Different types of diversity exist on Georgetown’s campus, and it is important that we engage all of them, but time and again, one of the most consistently relevant ones is racial diversity and the issues that surround it. It is of the utmost importance that we make conscious decisions to cultivate friendships across races because it is in these informal settings that we learn the most about one another and, in turn, ourselves.

It is also within these settings that we get into examining the “weeds” of race, privilege and oppression — those microaggressions that often cause the greatest offense, do the most damage to our community.

We are fortunate, in a 21st-century country, to be largely rid of overt, cross-burning, separate-drinking-fountain versions of racism. But what remains are the invisible forms of racism and they most often play out on an individual, relational level.

In our experience, it is within the context of friendship — genuine friendship, not tokenism — that we can give each other the space and the grace to talk about these issues honestly. It is under the auspices of friendship that a student with racial privilege can understand why a certain word or action is hurtful to another person, and has a vested interest in not being a repeat offender.

It is under the auspices of friendship that a minority student can call out a friend on a racist word or action and know that they will be believed and validated. Unforced, unscheduled, raw social interaction is where true progress takes place.

We can speak to this truth from our own experiences. Our friendship has allowed for a unique opportunity to engage in important, honest conversations about race that were perhaps at times uncomfortable, but were never enough to tear down the strong bond of friendship that we had established.

Having a diverse friend group allows us to engage with a community different from our own and gives a completely new mindset through which to view our own actions or social standing. Cross-racial friendships give us the opportunity to speak about the pricklier topics around race and racism in an honest, cathartic way.

When we make the conscious choice to broaden our circles of friends and speak about these important, but admittedly scary, topics, we come away with deeper, more fruitful friendships and allies in the struggle for racial justice.

We have experienced this in our own friendship, and we are both excited and hopeful for future generations of Hoyas to experience similar revelations through both the diversity requirement inside the classroom and a commitment toward building diverse friendships beyond the classroom.

 

Kendall Ciesemier and Camille Squires are seniors in the College. Eighteen Weeks appears every other Friday.

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