Creating King’s dream

Since 1998, IU students have enjoyed their only official three-day weekend in remembrance and celebration of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. It is unclear to me why Presidents’ Day, Memorial Day, Labor Day and other American holidays go ignored by IU students and faculty while state and federal employees observe a day off. That said, it may actually be fitting that IU marks MLK, Jr. Day with a seriousness that is not applied to other holidays – we have a lot of work left to do here when it comes to race relations.

While I see a real commitment to reaching the goal of a diverse IU, I don’t always think the resources available for working toward that goal are being wisely distributed.

IU has students from all walks of life: Our student body is diverse in a wide way, representing 125 countries and many races and ethnicities. Additionally, IU is big enough that whatever your experiences and background might be, chances are if you look around enough, you can find at least a few other people like you. In fact, a variety of University-run student centers, student groups and living-learning communities in the dorms exist to help you do just that.

IU is too good at helping students navigate toward others with similar shared experiences and not good enough at pushing students toward dialogue, living and becoming true friends with the students most unlike them.

The thrust of King’s celebrated dream requires this interaction – a joining of hands across differences. When I came to Indiana, I was told by friends and extended family that I should live in the Northwest neighborhood, and my dorm resembled a heavily Jewish suburb.

Having grown up in the city, I was uncomfortable in this environment where people’s backgrounds so closely resembled one another. For some, this familiarity probably contributed to an easy transition to college and facilitated social and academic success. Programs for students of a similar ethnic or racial group provided by the Office of Admissions or Residential Programs and Services provide a similarly comfortable and familiar setting to call home at IU.

But working toward healthy racial interaction isn’t going to be comfortable. IU is too segregated, and many students who never make an effort to break out of that familiarity are deprived of socially critical experiences. 

RPS should be brave enough to abandon the neighborhood request. They could still honor roommate requests but randomly assign students to different areas of campus housing. This might forcefully eliminate some of the “character” of certain neighborhoods that I see and bring opportunity for true integration and interaction between students.

Obviously, yesterday was a day to appreciate the hard work of every office on this campus that works for diversity, but I encourage some real thought about how this University can nudge students not only to acknowledge and celebrate their own background but also to engage in the real and interactive work of true diversity.