This past MLK weekend students gathered for a Unity Fair for a chance to observe the diversity at the College and appreciate different cultures. At this event, which was held in the Stern Center ballroom, a member of SGA’s campus diversity committee mentioned how beautiful it was to see all the diverse faces in the room and on campus. She said that there was so much diversity at C of C.
Really.
I looked around the room and saw blank faces looking back at her. The room was filled with no more than 200 students, more than 90 percent of whom were African American or Latino American. If you had never set foot on the College of Charleston campus before that night you may have believed what she said. The reality on campus, however, is not the one she spoke of. I know better. I know that walking down St. Phillip Street toward CVS, my chances are slim to none that I will encounter someone who looks like me. I know when I walk into my religion, math and German classes I will be the only minority in the room. And I knew by coming to this institution that there would be over 90 percent white students attending, too.
As an African American, I look around campus and see a mass of people who are the same, but somehow this white female SGA senator sees diversity. Maybe I’m seeing the wrong people. Maybe I’m looking in the wrong direction. Maybe she meant a different type of diversity. Sure, there are students at the College from all 50 states. And yes, there are even students from different countries. Some of these students are Jewish. Some of them are Catholic. And some of them are atheists. I guess if I look at it that way I can completely understand what she’s saying.
But why is it that African American students at the College are transferring to historically black colleges and universities? Why are they feeling frustrated when they walk into classrooms and they are the only ones? Why are they feeling inadequate and unnoticed? Why is it still that when I walk into Joe E. Berry Residence Hall I’m surrounded by females yet I still feel alone? Maybe it’s because some people walk by and bump into me like I don’t exist, or because some students feel the need to flaunt their Confederate flags, or maybe it’s those rare yet fresh-in-my-mind occasions when people feel the need to roll down their window and shout a racial slur to me and my friends.
Perhaps what does it for me, what pushes me a little too far, is when I overhear someone say that this school focuses and caters too much to minority groups, and should have something for the average white male.
But I guess from some people’s perspective that is how it may appear. I guess looking through the eyes of the “average white male,” who feels that the minorities on campus are given too much, this is how things would appear.
Our vision must be a little blurred, our shoes a little worn through, because looking through our eyes and walking in our shoes, we’re seeing a completely different campus. I see a campus that isn’t nearly as diverse as they make it out to be on the pamphlets and brochures they send home to mommy and daddy. I see a campus that appears to barely even reach the status quo. I see a college that doesn’t even try to reach out to the overwhelmingly poor black community surrounding its campus. I’m looking at a college that doesn’t even bother to look back at me.
I love the College of Charleston. I don’t regret choosing this school over Winthrop, USC or Clemson. I’ve had many eye-opening experiences in my first year on campus, but I would love for my presence to be appreciated more often than once a year for MLK weekend. I would love to feel as important to the College as it is to me.