How can we help prepare students for the tug of war for their souls? What a poignant--and prophetic--reminder of the task at hand when it comes to creating opportunities for students coming from backgrounds that are, simply, different from most of those they encounter on college campuses. Years ago, I attempted to spearhead an effort to bring more students of economically disadvantaged backgrounds to my institution. We created partnerships with CBOs, instituted scholarship programs, organized fly-in programs and intensified recruitment at schools and in neighborhoods where achieving a college education was, at best, a far away dream. And, we became good at the rhetoric of opportunity. It didnt take long before the complexion of our campus began to change noticeably. The change was momentary, though, as we soon discovered the difference between the promise and the delivery, between our ability to attract students and our ability to shepherd them through four years in a foreign environment to the point of graduation. As a high profile liberal arts college, we had assumed that by simply bringing these students into our environment, they would be better off--an assumption that proved to be as naïve as it was short-sighted. In the third year of our experiment, a friend and colleague, whose own life experience could be traced to the barrio and the seasonal migrant work of those who followed the harvest seasons throughout the Mississippi River valley, helped me understand the folly of our efforts. Peter, he said, What we are attempting to do here is very noble but it wont work because no one on this campus knows what it is like to be poor. When I objected that many of us understood the dynamics of poverty and were committed to creating meaningful opportunities, he cut me short: Thats true, he said, But no one really understands what it means to live day to day without knowing where the next meal will come from or where shelter for the night might be found. Until that happens, it doesnt make sense to try to bring students out of their home environments, meager as they might be, into one that doesnt know how to assimilate them. That conversation took place twenty years ago yet the issues remain the same. Whenever I hear the lament that elite institutions arent doing more to accommodate students of economically disadvantaged backgrounds, I wonder about the true fitness of a campus to assimilate students who come from different places in life. And I am reminded that those institutions might not be the most appropriate destinations for such students. Moreover, I fear that the rhetoric of opportunity that emanates from elite institutions reeks more of political correctness and a desire to project an air of inclusiveness than it does a real commitment to making a difference in young lives. Words alone cant make the difference. It is where they are matched by effective action that we will begin to measure progress. It is heartening to see that a number of colleges, including my former institution have since begun to embrace and respond to many of the internal, cultural issues that impact inclusiveness. nyti.ms/1pjAcJj
Posted on: Sat, 27 Sep 2014 15:44:16 +0000
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