I have often witnessed Orientation Guides attempt to describe the Diversity Center to new students, and while many hit key points, I have never heard a succinct and satisfying way to describe it.
So, here's my attempt: I want you to envision the Diversity Center, but picture it as a box shaped void, devoid of the people, couches, colors, and identity. Begin filling the box with words; good and bad, gendered and non-gendered, hateful and kind. Now, add ideas to these words, let them flow from your mind and into this space. Some of these ideas attract each other, others repel, still others spin about each other seemingly engaged only to disappear into the growing mass of thoughts whirling about in this void.
While you're envisioning this conglomeration, picture your parents and your great-great-grandmother. Picture the president and your high school bully. Picture the world wars, and picture smallpox. Include the native people displaced and destabilized in colonial countries. Include all the religious practices you know. Picture a slave in chains or a migrant worker setting the table for dinner. Listen to the sounds of thunder and rain or the voice of your favorite pastor. Smell the scent of your favorite pie, fresh out of the oven. Picture your professors at an 8 am lecture and picture the kid in the back asking the questions you know all the answers to. All these things, places, ideas, and images are oozing their own words and ideas, some of them theirs, some of them yours, and some of them shared.
Step back, and look at the mess of "stuff" you have put into this space. Maybe it looks like intangible murk or maybe you can see spots where it is less thick. Perhaps there are spots that don't have any thing going on in them at all.
That mess you've made is the world. It's a nexus of processes, ideas, people, things, feelings, places, smells, memories, histories, and all manner of tangible and intangible things. This is not an image to be reconciled with a shrug and a nod. This is an image to be understood; but where to start?
I want you to envision yourself walking towards this mass of complexities.
Imagine, as soon as you walk through the threshold of the door, the world comes back into reality. The couches are back in their places, the walls have color, and the intangible mass is gone. Around you, however, are students, talking, sleeping, relaxing, eating, and doing homework.
One of them welcomes you to the space, asks for your name and about your major and all the usual stuff. Before long you're talking about your background, and soon you've learned something new about this person as well. You've taken their perspective, and appreciated it, enough so that maybe you will remember and respect it when you encounter someone who identifies with the same perspective. Not only that, but their perspective has helped you criticize your own perspectives and beliefs, and now you have a new outlook on things that were previously lurking in the depths of our intangible model.Through this interaction, the community you belong to has become less of a dismissible stranger-filled space, and more of an extension of yourself.
This is the Diversity Center and this is what it can do. It is a tool for you to utilize, rather than some magical machine that spits out perfectly well intentioned and diverse people. It is a choice, and not a simple two scoops over one scoop choice, but a choice to take on that intangible mass of overhanging complexities and processes and begin breaking it down, with the acknowledgment that it cannot be understood in its entirety. It is a choice to allow others' perspectives and experiences to have significance in your life, and a chance for you to use this choice to create your own world view.
It would be a lie for me to tell you that I came to the diversity center as a well-rounded person. It would be a bigger lie for me to tell you that I didn't think I was a well rounded individual with the world condensed, labeled, and filed away.
I thought I was coming into a space where I, as it was common for me in academics, would be one of the best. That idea in and of itself should give you a fair idea of the kind of mindset I began my college career with. I was absolutely and irrevocably full of myself, and stubborn, in that sense of self worth, to the point of self righteousness.
It did not take any time at all for the Diversity Center to begin working at the bulwark of my ignorance and stubbornness. Within days of beginning at PLU, my ideas and beliefs were challenged and changed, and not because the Diversity center waved a wand or did 3 turns and a heel click. It turned me into an open-minded person because the people in the Diversity Center took the time and patience to give me the tools to recognize my transgressions.
Of course, this doesn't mean it took a short time for me to change my view on life. In fact, it would be hard for me to say that my first year with the Diversity Center completely changed how I viewed and approached the world. If I were to stamp a date on it, I would say that everything came full circle in the second half of my second year. In a way, the "veil" hadn't been "lifted" so much as it has been chipped away at. After two and a half years, I was actually able to acknowledge a very discernible difference in the way I listened to, and took in, perspectives and experiences.
I am, naturally, still a stubborn person, and sometimes I find myself slipping back into old habits of ignoring other individuals' experiences or perspectives, but where before my stubbornness would have reinforced this ignorance, now it fights it. Ultimately, in the wake of all my Diversity Center interactions, it bothers me to not listen with empathy and it bothers me even more when I feel myself judging before taking others' perspectives or without hearing their experiences.
To me, the words perspective taking, critical reflection, and community are not just words or the mantra of the Diversity Center, they are the tools the Diversity Center passes on to the people who take the time to incorporate them into their lives. In this way, the Diversity Center is not merely an automated process, but it lends its students autonomy in the development of their personal world view. The Diversity Center has given me the tools to help me reframe my stubbornness, an integral part of my identity, into something beneficial for me, and the people I interact with, and I plan on using these tools for the rest of my life.
I can say, without a doubt in my mind, that the Diversity Center has helped me create the life I want to lead. For that, I owe the Diversity Center many thanks and a lot of love.
Please, the next time you're passing by the Diversity Center, don't just see the space, watch the interactions and watch the tools of the Diversity Center being passed along in conversation and laughter. Then come join us in building a community of engaged, intentional, and caring people. You are always welcome and I know you will walk away better for it.
By Beau Smith
So, here's my attempt: I want you to envision the Diversity Center, but picture it as a box shaped void, devoid of the people, couches, colors, and identity. Begin filling the box with words; good and bad, gendered and non-gendered, hateful and kind. Now, add ideas to these words, let them flow from your mind and into this space. Some of these ideas attract each other, others repel, still others spin about each other seemingly engaged only to disappear into the growing mass of thoughts whirling about in this void.
While you're envisioning this conglomeration, picture your parents and your great-great-grandmother. Picture the president and your high school bully. Picture the world wars, and picture smallpox. Include the native people displaced and destabilized in colonial countries. Include all the religious practices you know. Picture a slave in chains or a migrant worker setting the table for dinner. Listen to the sounds of thunder and rain or the voice of your favorite pastor. Smell the scent of your favorite pie, fresh out of the oven. Picture your professors at an 8 am lecture and picture the kid in the back asking the questions you know all the answers to. All these things, places, ideas, and images are oozing their own words and ideas, some of them theirs, some of them yours, and some of them shared.
Step back, and look at the mess of "stuff" you have put into this space. Maybe it looks like intangible murk or maybe you can see spots where it is less thick. Perhaps there are spots that don't have any thing going on in them at all.
That mess you've made is the world. It's a nexus of processes, ideas, people, things, feelings, places, smells, memories, histories, and all manner of tangible and intangible things. This is not an image to be reconciled with a shrug and a nod. This is an image to be understood; but where to start?
I want you to envision yourself walking towards this mass of complexities.
Imagine, as soon as you walk through the threshold of the door, the world comes back into reality. The couches are back in their places, the walls have color, and the intangible mass is gone. Around you, however, are students, talking, sleeping, relaxing, eating, and doing homework.
One of them welcomes you to the space, asks for your name and about your major and all the usual stuff. Before long you're talking about your background, and soon you've learned something new about this person as well. You've taken their perspective, and appreciated it, enough so that maybe you will remember and respect it when you encounter someone who identifies with the same perspective. Not only that, but their perspective has helped you criticize your own perspectives and beliefs, and now you have a new outlook on things that were previously lurking in the depths of our intangible model.Through this interaction, the community you belong to has become less of a dismissible stranger-filled space, and more of an extension of yourself.
This is the Diversity Center and this is what it can do. It is a tool for you to utilize, rather than some magical machine that spits out perfectly well intentioned and diverse people. It is a choice, and not a simple two scoops over one scoop choice, but a choice to take on that intangible mass of overhanging complexities and processes and begin breaking it down, with the acknowledgment that it cannot be understood in its entirety. It is a choice to allow others' perspectives and experiences to have significance in your life, and a chance for you to use this choice to create your own world view.
It would be a lie for me to tell you that I came to the diversity center as a well-rounded person. It would be a bigger lie for me to tell you that I didn't think I was a well rounded individual with the world condensed, labeled, and filed away.
I thought I was coming into a space where I, as it was common for me in academics, would be one of the best. That idea in and of itself should give you a fair idea of the kind of mindset I began my college career with. I was absolutely and irrevocably full of myself, and stubborn, in that sense of self worth, to the point of self righteousness.
It did not take any time at all for the Diversity Center to begin working at the bulwark of my ignorance and stubbornness. Within days of beginning at PLU, my ideas and beliefs were challenged and changed, and not because the Diversity center waved a wand or did 3 turns and a heel click. It turned me into an open-minded person because the people in the Diversity Center took the time and patience to give me the tools to recognize my transgressions.
Of course, this doesn't mean it took a short time for me to change my view on life. In fact, it would be hard for me to say that my first year with the Diversity Center completely changed how I viewed and approached the world. If I were to stamp a date on it, I would say that everything came full circle in the second half of my second year. In a way, the "veil" hadn't been "lifted" so much as it has been chipped away at. After two and a half years, I was actually able to acknowledge a very discernible difference in the way I listened to, and took in, perspectives and experiences.
I am, naturally, still a stubborn person, and sometimes I find myself slipping back into old habits of ignoring other individuals' experiences or perspectives, but where before my stubbornness would have reinforced this ignorance, now it fights it. Ultimately, in the wake of all my Diversity Center interactions, it bothers me to not listen with empathy and it bothers me even more when I feel myself judging before taking others' perspectives or without hearing their experiences.
To me, the words perspective taking, critical reflection, and community are not just words or the mantra of the Diversity Center, they are the tools the Diversity Center passes on to the people who take the time to incorporate them into their lives. In this way, the Diversity Center is not merely an automated process, but it lends its students autonomy in the development of their personal world view. The Diversity Center has given me the tools to help me reframe my stubbornness, an integral part of my identity, into something beneficial for me, and the people I interact with, and I plan on using these tools for the rest of my life.
I can say, without a doubt in my mind, that the Diversity Center has helped me create the life I want to lead. For that, I owe the Diversity Center many thanks and a lot of love.
Please, the next time you're passing by the Diversity Center, don't just see the space, watch the interactions and watch the tools of the Diversity Center being passed along in conversation and laughter. Then come join us in building a community of engaged, intentional, and caring people. You are always welcome and I know you will walk away better for it.
By Beau Smith
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