By Lynn Le
My recent attendance to International Night shed new light on the issue of diversity awareness on our campus - a topic I feel is often beaten into the ground. But the perspective is different this time around.
No longer does the frustration with the lack of cultural competency exist because Caucasian students have no interest in joining different cultural clubs, or attending multi-cultural events.
International Night appeared to be wildly successful, drawing in students, faculty, staff as well as Portland metro community members. Instead, the focus needs to shift from the student body's participation to the administration's structuring of our core curriculum, and the issue of the University not readily preparing its students for a diverse workforce.
As a Vietnamese-American student on this campus, I have heard a plethora of ideas on how to create more enthusiasm toward diversity - from creating new ethnic clubs to utilizing the social powers of Facebook groups and events to making Advantage posters more visible.
Responsibility for improving cultural competency is continually placed on the students, while the direct power and influence the administration and faculty members have on the education of those students is overlooked.
By altering the core curriculum and embedding cultural awareness issues into it, every single student - required by the University to take these courses - would be better equipped to face the cultural issues that arise in our society today.
After reading an article from "The Review of Higher Education" journal titled, "Enhancing Campus Climates for Racial/Ethnic Diversity: Educational Policy and Practice," it makes sense to place higher emphasis on spreading awareness through the classroom.
The article suggests "institutional leaders can significantly strengthen the psychological climate on their campuses by purposefully becoming deliberate agents of socialization.
"They can begin by designing and implementing systematic and comprehensive educational programs to help all members of the campus community to identify and confront the stereotypes and myths that people have about those who are different from them."
"Faculty can facilitate positive interaction in the classroom by insuring that racial/ethnic diversity is part of the course content."
Though the University has enabled a core curriculum designed to produce a well-rounded liberal arts college student, not every student is required to take a race relations class, or some sort of "Culture 101."
While I am not necessarily saying that there should be a requirement for such classes, what should be expected of professors of any discipline is the application of current events into relevant course material.
Even dedicating 10 or 15 minutes of class time every other day would be beneficial. Additionally, coordinating on-campus events with assignments - providing extra credit for attendance, or even establishing them as graded assignments-would greatly affect students' involvement and awareness of the diversity that already exists.
Being in an institution of higher education, there should be more done to implement cultural competency.
Students are here to prepare themselves for a variety of professional careers and life experiences in which they will face people from an array of races and ethnicities, and so various forms of cultural awareness activities in the classroom can have an enormous impact after four years.
Essentially, I feel the responsibility of the lack of diversity awareness needs to be placed on both students and administrators.
Apathy towards cultural awareness is a bad habit of the student body. We live in a first world country with an abundance of educational resources and opportunities, so we should be taking advantage of them.
That is not to say you should join every multicultural club and attend every event, but simply reading the newspaper everyday would vastly improve this plague of apathy.
Understand your vital membership of a larger community, and become more informed and aware of the different types of people in that community and the world. The diversity issue on this campus is no longer any club's issue; it is everyone's to address.
?Lynn Le is a sophomore business major
