Glossy Brochure Diversity

The "diversity" that Neil L. Rudenstine defends in his beautifully constructed and eloquent President's Report is an elusive concept. It simultaneously balances race, ethnicity, gender, socio-economics, geography, religion, sexual orientation, politics, disabilities, academic interests and family situation in an endless supermarket list of characteristics which defines who we are.

The pursuit of racial diversity comes at the expense of socio-economic and geographic diversity, and reduces student interaction into formulas based on the color of our skin rather than the richness of our backgrounds. In his report, Rudenstine mentions these factors only in passing. He writes, "The most constructed and well-conceived admissions programs are those that view affirmative action in relation to the educational benefits of diversity. They may take various characteristics such as race, ethnicity, or gender into account as potential 'plus' factors (among many others) when evaluating candidates, but they do not assign such characteristics an overriding value." If the best possible educationally diverse environment is sought, then we are robbing ourselves by implementing relaxed standards for race-based affirmative action.

Rudenstine justifies the gap that exists between under-represented minorities and other groups at Harvard. There is a 95 point SAT difference between matriculated black and white students. Granted, the SAT is far from a perfect indicator, but it is accurate to the extent that a 95 point gap is a statistically significant relaxation in standards.

Such a discrepancy, Rudenstine argues, is made up for by racial minorities' contributions to the "diverse student body as an 'educational resource' of coordinate importance to the faculty, library or science laboratories."

There is a definite synergy that occurs when 6,500 of the most talented undergraduates in the nation are brought together on one campus. However, Harvard is being seduced by surface or "brochure" diversity--the kind that is visible in the glossy college pamphlets we get from admissions office. It is packageable and media-friendly. It satisfies public relations needs. Photographs cannot differentiate between students who grew up in a rural town or an inner city neighborhood, or which students' parents are taxi drivers or doctors.

Harvard's surface interpretation of diversity is manifested in the administration's 20-year refusal to fully develop ethnic studies. The premise behind using affirmative action to pursue diversity is that minority students here have cultivated a certain rich perspective which other students can draw from. Their people have a history and their experiences have a legitimacy--but only, it seems, outside the classroom. They somehow lose their validity when confronted by the white pillars of academia. What it says is that what we can learn from minorities exists only at food fests or in cultural show extravaganzas.

If we are tempted by the image of diversity rather than the substance, we are fated for ill-conceived approaches to and results from affirmative action.

Of course race and ethnicity can have a profound impact on shaping one's character and perspective. But it is the manifestation of this perspective which we should seek, not the race and ethnicity in and of itself. For Chicano students, this could entail growing up in a bilingual household, not just the fact their last names are Rodriguez, Fernandez or Lopez. For black students, it might come about through participating in black youth leadership conferences. But race by itself as an intrinsic fact should not be used to relax admissions criteria.

It is no secret that the main beneficiaries of affirmative action are not the disadvantaged youth from the inner city, but upper middle class minority students, many of whom have lived in white enclaves for most of their lives and who apply from many of the same privileged schools as other students who traditionally attend Harvard. That is not to say there aren't anecdotal exceptions for the enriching effects of affirmative action. But overwhelmingly, the backgrounds that these students come from, the advantages and opportunities that they have had, are similar to those of other students who attend Harvard. There is a certain homogeneity of experience among many students here--Princeton Review prep classes, professional parents and academic summer camps. To relax standards for minority students who have had these opportunities does not truly broaden diversity.

To truly enrich Harvard, the spots which we tenuously reserve in a "non-quota" manner for minority students should be given to those who really do need the "appropriate consideration." There are exceptions we should be making more of. Instead of giving the benefit of the doubt to under-represented minorities, a lower GPA can be accepted for a student who worked 15 hours a week to help her parents maintain the family; for a Vietnamese refugee with a lower verbal SAT score; for a student from rural West Virginia (where there are no science research institutions to do a junior-year research project) with less extensive extracurriculars.

How does diversity translate into student interaction? My rooming group is the college brochure picture of diversity. There are four of us: a Jew, a black, an Asian and a caucasian. But our diversity is not as deep as it may seem. Three of us are from New York City and attended elite private and public schools. The other is from rural western Pennsylvania. I have learned more from my Pennsylvanian roommate in discussions about small town life, sports and ambitions, than I have from my other two roommates.

Though Harvard may seem racially homogenous, it is more diverse racially than it is socio-economically. Excluding international students, Harvard is presently 18.8 percent Asian American, 7.8 percent black and 5.6 percent Latino. But only 15 percent of students come from families which make less than $65,000 a year, an income at the 92.3 national percentile. Essentially, 85 percent of Harvard students come from the richest 7.7 percent of America--hardly a cross-section of our society.

Though only 20 percent of adults are college-educated, the number of students who come from families with no college background has hovered around 10 percent. This is after a long term downward trend which had started at least since 1974, when Dean L. Fred Jewett '57 wrote, "Unless we can take corrective actions the increasing economic stratification of our applicant pool will inevitably affect overall class quality as well as the goals of diversity."

The economic spectrum in which Harvard examines race is hardly diverse. We can see by our numbers where the gaps between Harvard and America are most significant, and where Harvard most resembles an ivory tower--not in that it is ivory, but more because it is a socio-economic tower.