I was invited to take part in a survey of my "experience at UMM" as part of a randomly selected group of students.
At one point I was asked to rate my experience from 0 (Very poor) to 10 (excellent) or n/a.
Most was fairly standard, until it asked me this:
c. Cultural diversity among the student body, from very poor to excellent.
And this:
d. International aspects of classes and campus activities.
Because I am a cantankerous bastard, I answered both n/a and then offered a rebuttal in the comments block. I am relatively proud of it, and I think it has a good message that you should all hear. Or else.
c. Rate cultural diversity among the student body, from very poor to excellent...
First:
What the hell does that even mean? Do I think it is good that we have diversity? Am I pleased with how many different ethnicities our campus has collected? Do I feel we have "enough" diversity per capita? What is it that you want me to quantify here? Is there some objective standard that I should be judging this by, or is this about my feelings about how diverse I expect this place to be?
Second:
I don't really care about diversity on campus. There is nothing about diversity that improves the quality of education offered by the school. The only way I could imagine that I could be able to quantify my pleasure or displeasure as to the amount of diversity available on campus would be if I were either (a) a bigot or (b) someone who had very stupid priorities (think hippies).
Third:
We live in the middle of Minnesota. Don't kid yourselves.
As for:
d. International aspects of classes and other campus activities...
As for classes, I am not an anthropology major. As for campus activities, see above.
Are we "diverse" enough? Diverse enough for what?
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I definitely agree that the question is vague. For those of us who choose not to emphasize that fact though, I believe the questions act as affirmation for the school. They definitely try to create a very diverse atmosphere in their recruiting and class choices.
They try to create this image that Morris is a magical realm of multiculturalism unheard of outside of the "Small World" ride at Disneyland.
These people have exact figures of how diverse the student body is, to the point that they even have set goals and informal quotas that they try to fulfill.
Bothering me about it doesn't help them except that they can publish more stuff saying how wonderful they are.
Also, Noe Lopez answered with a zero. He's the loneliest minority on campus.
Yes...a "0"...it's the loneliest number.
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