Volume CXXXIII, Number 16 February 15, 2002 f

Efforts need an intellectual focus
PATRICK ROCKEFELLER

At the much-touted Diversity Panel Discussion on Wednesday night, the one conclusion everyone seemed to agree upon was that diversity is good.
What troubled me was that something seemed to be lacking from the conversation. The panel and audience all agreed that we needed more diversity. But to what end? When the question of our endgame-what goals we're hoping to achieve-came up, the panel was, for all intents and purposes, stumped.

And therein lies the problem.

Diversity, while "good," is not, in and of itself, an end. Racial, ethnic, sexual, gender, socioeconomic, (insert favorite type of diversity here) diversity is all well and good, but what does the College want to accomplish with it?
Answers-and I'm paraphrasing a bit here-ranged from "We want diversity so we can continue to build more diversity…" to talk of a "critical mass" of self-perpetuating, diverse students. To be honest, this made me think more of a Cold War-era nuclear arms race than a well thought out plan for the College's future.

To the panel's credit, it admitted to an uncertainty in its mission, but that admission doesn't let it off the hook. Bowdoin College has to decide what its goals are, and then set about to achieve those goals. Simply diversifying for the hell of it is not a goal.

Wil Smith, one of the panelists, mentioned that he was skeptical as to whether the school would continue to fund diversity-enhancing efforts if the endowment runs into hard times. One of the strongest ways for the College to ensure the continuation of that funding is to develop a clear and decisive image for the future, and to work toward that goal.

If I were on the Board of Trustees during hard economic times and someone came to me asking for money to enhance diversity, not explaining what he or she wanted to accomplish with it, I wouldn't fund it, either.
When a problem arises, "put more money into it" is too often the answer.

I'm not saying that we shouldn't finance some of the diversity-promoting programs we have. We have to decide first what we want to accomplish with that diversity.

So here is my plan.

When George Will was here last year, he said intellectual diversity is the only kind of diversity that matters. While I'm not sure I completely agree with that, he makes a good point. Bowdoin is an institute of higher learning. Therefore, our efforts to diversify should be directed towards enhancing our education.

With this as a goal, diversity becomes more about what students can bring to the proverbial table than the color of their skin. I fear we put too much emphasis on what people look like and not enough on what they think.

If beauty is truly on the inside, we need to make sure that our efforts to diversify take that into account. Otherwise, we may end up with a campus that looks like a rainbow, but where everyone thinks the same things. What fun is that? What would we learn?

I find well-informed debate to be one of the most educational activities I can engage in at Bowdoin. There are a lot of smart people with strong opinions, and if I can argue my side, I can also learn from theirs, forcing myself to question my own beliefs. At the end of a debate, I can reassess my opinions, hopefully having learned something.

For such intellectual debate to work, however, we need students with diverging views and opinions. It doesn't matter what color their skin is, or where they're from, or how much money their families make. I would rather learn more about what's in their heads and in their hearts.

So, get a bunch of students, blindfold them, and sit them around a table. Let them talk, and see where the conversation goes. If everyone agrees, Bowdoin cannot be diverse enough. If there is disagreement and passionate debate where people are both challenged and educated, model the future of Bowdoin on that.