What do you picture when you think of the word "diversity" as it relates to Dartmouth College? A pony-tailed Native American male and a Caucasian hermaphrodite with purple fingernails meeting for herbal tea in Sanborn? A Catholic mulatto lesbian and a Birkenstock-wearing Reformed Jew eating ham sandwiches on crunchy oat bread at Collis? Or better yet, a one-legged Southeast Asian-American from Greenwich, Ct. and a gay Black male from Harlem playing bongo drums on the Green?
If any of these images share a striking resemblance to the colorful picture of diversity now floating in your head, then perhaps you should participate in the diversity focus groups meeting next week to assist the dean of the College Diversity Committee in developing its "diversity mission statement and plan."
However, if the word "diversity" in the context of Dartmouth College conjures up images of highly-motivated students and accomplished professors sitting around a table discussing diverse economic, political and scientific theories, analyzing empirical data, developing innovative ideas and questioning the premises of other persons' arguments, then perhaps you should write to the dean of the College Diversity Committee and express your interest in adhering to Dartmouth's already well-established Mission Statement which seeks to promote "intellectual" diversity at the College.
According to the Mission Statement, which is conveniently posted on the College's web-page, "Dartmouth College is dedicated to providing undergraduate, graduate and professional education of the highest quality, and to fostering a love of learning in every member of its community ..."
One of the essential elements of the College's character according to the Statement is "a devotion to a vital learning environment, dating to the College's founding charter, that is rooted in the liberal arts tradition. This environment depends upon a faculty committed to outstanding teaching and to excellence in scholarship, research and other professional activities, as well as talented, highly motivated and intellectually curious students."
No wonder the leftist bureaucrats in the dean of the College's office are crusading for a "diversity mission statement" -- there's not a single word pertaining to race, ethnicity, socioeconomic class, sexual orientation, physical ability or religion anywhere in the College's Mission Statement (and there's a good reason for that).
While learning to tolerate cultural diversity is important in a nation as great and diverse as ours, an elite academic institution such as Dartmouth College is not the appropriate forum for "superficial" diversity training -- especially when it comes at the expense of "intellectual" diversity in the form of unqualified students in the classroom.
If you wish to immerse yourself in an ethnically diverse community, then save your parents $30,000 a year and work at a cafe in Greenwich Village. If you seek to learn more about homosexuality, then spend a term on Miami's South Beach, where you'll see more men in G-strings than women. Or if it's learning about different racial and socioeconomic groups that interests you, visit a friend at the University of Chicago and walk a block or two beyond the campus.
But if it is a liberal arts education at one of the nation's finest academic institutions where most (it should be all) students are accepted based on merit, then Dartmouth College is the place for you.
In reality, under a merit-based admissions policy, there will be a variety of racial, ethnic, socioeconomic and religious groups represented at the table. In fact, many of my peers that I admire most at Dartmouth are highly-qualified minorities whose academic achievements earned them a place at the College. It is their intellectual firepower that lights up my eyes in class and not their skin color, socioeconomic status or sexual orientation. Perhaps under a truly merit-based admissions policy there will be fewer total minorities accepted, as the current situation in California has revealed. But let us not forget that it is quality, not quantity that counts.
And so, before I leave Dartmouth, would I like to accept the dean of the College Diversity Committee's offer to share my "thoughts, feelings and experiences on issues of diversity; particularly as they relate to Dartmouth College?" The answer is a resounding, "Yes!" Intellectual diversity matters.
