What’s Good? What’s New?
I know that my previous blog was on the survey, but given that it can change drastically I wanted to give you an update!
 New Results!
Some of the results have changed including…
- Responder Makeup: 40% Caucasian, 25% Asian, 20% Hispanic/Latino
- 80% of responder’s friends are Caucasian, 65% are Asian
- 60% of responders are NOT associated with the MCC
- 75% of responders consider diversity important
- 55% of responders think of SCU as diverse culturally and racially
With 20 responders, these results have become more stable and have aligned with the diversity statistics provided by Santa Clara University. Besides the statistics and percentages, I presented short answer questions in the survey, wondering about the actual thoughts of the responders. It took a while but I finally received significant written responses and filtered out the troll responses.
What Does This Mean?
Responders said the university could improve diversity awareness by not allowing, “groups like Turning Point USA [to exist]; Address conflicts related to discrimination or insensitivity by doing more than just saying ‘Sorry that happened’ but by condemning the actions and punish those who are responsible for making a lot of students feel uncomfortable accordingly”. In addition, the administration could, “Hold and support more events involving diversity and publicizing them [and] incorporate it more into the curriculum of particular classes such as CTW, C&I, Diversity, Art…”. One response simply said, “Everything”. From these, it is clear that students recognize the need for improvement in the first place, showing how the population of SCU is aware of diversity. These responses provide good guidelines as to what should be changed as well as ways to accomplish that. Almost all the responses included some ideas for more events hosted and supported by the university and overall inclusion of minorities.
But What About The Majority?
On the other hand, some students replied to, “make the multicultural center open to caucauscism because right now they make me feel very uncomfortable and excluded” and that they, “have definitely heard [their] caucasians friends, maybe jokingly say, that the MCC is not inclusive of white students and they don’t feel accepted”. This also connects back to previous post of mines on the FTP! (check out this link if you haven’t read it), and how Caucasian students feel separated from the MCC. In my opinion, the goal of the MCC is to make racially and culturally minority students feel included and accepted at a university that is predominantly white. Therefore, it is contradictory to have organizations built around Caucasian culture when the group is the majority within the school as well as the country holistically. Yet, this doesn’t mean that Caucasian students cannot get involved in the events and programs of the MCC. For example, the current co-president of APSU (Asian Pacific-Islander Student Union) is white and has discussed his interest in APSU as loving the culture and the individuals, wanting to learn about and love Asian Pacific-Islander culture and become a part of the MCC. Overall, I believe that anyone, and I mean ANYONE, can join the MCC community, no matter our differences as students at SCU.
Thanks for reading!