Colleges across the U.S. have been trying to do a better job of making students who have traditionally been underrepresented on campus feel welcome and included. But some of their attempts, however well-intentioned, garner as much ire as support. While many see the creation of safe spaces for black students, LGBT students, and other minorities as a positive step toward helping them navigate campus, others see it as resegregation and a step backward.
Moraine Valley Community College on the outskirts of Chicago recently said it would add several sections specifically for black students to a required introductory course before abruptly walking back that decision. Prior to the decision not to offer the targeted sections, Margaret Lehner, the vice president for institutional advancement, told Inside Higher Ed that the school had found the course, which is intended to help students learn to study and plot career goals, to be especially effective when students of similar backgrounds take it together. She said the school had offered courses in the past specifically for women, for veterans, and for Hispanics, and pointed out that African American students were welcome to sign up for sections that are open to everyone. “We find that these particular courses with these particular groups with our mentoring and peer support help them to be more successful than they would be if they did not have this particular experience,” she told the site.
But the course is also intended to help students “develop an appreciation for diversity,” according to the class description, and critics raised concerns that in separating students, such courses would promote racial silos instead of fostering interracial dialogue. Even several people interviewed for this story who were sympathetic to the idea questioned the legality and wisdom of implementing it. “I get it, I really do,” said Tressie McMillan Cottom, an assistant professor of sociology at Virginia Commonwealth University who has written for The Atlantic. “But it isn’t practical. I can’t imagine it standing up to criticism. The classroom has to be the space where everybody comes and is uncomfortable. College is about being safely uncomfortable.” That means no class nor section is perfect. There is going to be tension. But, she said, schools “can’t chase perfect at the expense of a democratic classroom.”
[For more of this story, written by Emily Deruy, go to http://www.theatlantic.com/edu...-segregation/496289/]
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