Influences on Students' Openness to Diversity and Challenge in the Second and Third Years of College

Abstract

This will come off snobby, but it's not racial. I am not a racist. I have black friends, my friends date black people. But I don't want to go to a diverse school. I wanted to be at a school like this. If you want to go to a diverse university, then apply to one. Why ruin it for people here? Lauren, quoted in Baxter Magolda, 1997 Introduction Diversity in Postsecondary Education Recent reports on the condition of undergraduate education have addressed the challenges of meeting the needs of an increasingly diverse student population and preparing students for life and leadership in an increasingly diverse society. Several have highlighted the necessity of developing inclusive, multicultural communities of students, faculty, and administrators (The Boyer Commission on Educating Undergraduates in the Research University [Boyer Commission], 1998; NASULGC, 1997; Wingspread, 1993). The most recent of these reports, Reinventing Undergraduate Education: A Blueprint for America's Research Universities (Boyer Commission, 1998), stated that students in research universities have the right to opportunities to interact with people of backgrounds, cultures, and experiences different from the student's own (p. 17) [emphasis added]. Nevertheless, persons in historically underrepresented groups, particularly students of color, tend to have been served poorly by higher education (NASULGC, 1997; R endon, 1998; Wilson, 1997a; Wingspread Group, 1993). Indeed, questions persist about the extent to which college campuses are making sufficient progress in educating all students for life in a diverse society (cf. Boyer Commission, 1998; NASULGC, 1997; Rendon, 1996; Wilson, 1997a, 1997b; Wingspread, 1993). There is evidence, for example, that many white undergraduate students are, at best, apathetic and, at worst, actively hostile toward participation in diverse learning communities (Baxter Magolda, 1997; Levine & Cureton, 1998a, 1998b; Wilson, 1997a, 1997b). In a report of their research on undergraduate students in the 1990s, Levine and Cureton (1998b) asserted that tension regarding and difference runs high across college life....Multiculturalism remains the most unresolved issue on campus today (p. 7). In fact, 62% of the deans of students participating in the Levine and Cureton (1998a, 1998b, 1998c) study stated that issues were the main cause of student conflicts on their campuses. For student respondents as well, multiculturalism far overshadowed any other issue, particularly when related concerns, such as gender equity, sexual orientation, free speech, and civil rights were added to the mix (Levine & Cureton, 1998c, p. 146). At the same time, students in the Levine and Cureton study, as well as in others (cf, Baxter Magolda, 1997; Grant Haworth, 1997), described reluctance to engage in discussions about or multiculturalism. This reluctance has been attributed to students' feeling that diversity has been shoved down their throats (Levine & Cureton, 1998c, p. 146) by high-school teachers, parents, and society in general, as well as students' perception that they are not free to express themselves openly and honestly about race, ethnicity, gender, or sexual orientation. They know which views are acceptable to voice. If they choose...to take the safe route and not voice the unacceptable, they can create a false sense of civility. This leads some students to devalue what they see as politically correct ideas (Baxter Magolda, 1997, p. 18). The statement by Lauren at the beginning of this article can be viewed as an example of voicing the unacceptable; Lauren affirmed this interpretation: People seemed to jump on me [i n response to my statement].... A lot of people didn't say anything; they probably felt the same as me, but they saw what I was getting into and didn't want to get involved (Baxter Magolda, 1997, p. 17). Thus, another response to campus tensions regarding and difference is an increasing fragmentation of student communities into increasingly smaller groups, many of which are founded on commonalities of race, culture, sexual orientation, and gender (Astin, 1993a; Levine & Cureton, 1998a, 1998b, 1998c). …