Whistling Vivaldi is not enough

As fortunate students at the University, we are thrown into a “melting pot” of cultures. Our classmates may have grown up halfway around the world and for some, English is not their first language. There are students who grew up in racially homogenous neighborhoods and students who come from areas that may not even have immediate access to grocery stores. There is a wide range of students here at the University and that’s the point, isn’t it — to provide everyone here with a wide range of experiences that can make each of us better future leaders?

For the class of 2019, University President Christopher Eisgruber ’83 chose “Whistling Vivaldi” as the Pre-read book, and I did not enjoy it; not that it matters. No number of Pre-read books, highly renowned or not, is going to entirely address the social issues we have on campus. For starters, how many of us even read our Pre-read books? Let’s assume that the selected Pre-read book had the magical remedy to give everyone the understanding they need to become less bigoted members of campus. From a highly informal sampling, I know several of my peers who either did not finish this year’s Pre-read or didn’t bother to read it at all.

The fact that students did not read “Whistling Vivaldi”or “Meaning in Life and Why it Matters”is not the issue here. What matters is how we can truly address the social issues on our campus — everything from lapses in the way we understand how history plays a role in current socioeconomic and racial tensions to the intersectionalities that impact many on a daily basis — in a way that is permanent. We should expect more of each other and even ourselves than spending a day or two on a 256-page research account that is quickly forgotten in a matter of weeks.

In the fall of 2017, University of California, Los Angeleswill institute a controversial diversity requirement that will “substantially address racial, ethnic, gender, socioeconomic, sexual orientation, religious or other types of diversity.”While Princeton and UCLA have quite a number of differences, there are similar patterns within both schools concerning the marginalization of a wide range of minorities. Several other universities, including theUniversity of Washington,have instituted similar diversity requirements. As Princeton prides itself as a university that welcomes people of all backgrounds, is it time to institute a diversity requirement of our own?

If you were like me when you entered the University, there were a few things that you knew about different cultures that you had mostly garnered from television, the Internet, social media and books. For me, there remain several questions that I continue to ask my roommates about their cultures, nuanced things that I never thought to search on Google. While my friends were generous in offering such information, the truth of the matter is that they are nobody’s textbooks and indeed none of us are. The University wants us to learn from each other in positive and meaningful ways, but this puts a burden on us all. Such knowledge should not entirely rely on whether our friends want to tell us about their cultures and our friends should not be considered mouthpieces for these complex identities. While our peers are invaluable, to expect such knowledge from them is both infeasible — indeed, many of us are afraid of asking questions that may be deemed insensitive to our peers in the first place — and irresponsible. It assumes too much and expects too little.

The University’sTask Force on General Education, chaired by Dean of the College Jill Dolan, has begun to address such calls for action, with questions on its website such as, “How should issues of diversity and culture be integrated into the general education curriculum at Princeton? Should we include a ‘diversity requirement,’ as the Special Task Force on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion urged in their May 2015 report?” It is a good sign that the University has begun to think about these changes. While the committee has not yet published a report addressing such questions, it is imperative that the Task Force find ways to integrate diversity into the studies of the University as soon as possible. If the University decides to implement a diversity requirement, it will demand that students analyze and question the delicate fabric of our current diverse world. Although this is not an impeccable solution, with any luck existing classes at the University will not hesitate to correct students’ misconceptions and begin to answer hard questions the way perhaps our friends or a Pre-read book cannot.

Imani Thornton is a sophomore from Matteson, Ill. She can be reached at it4@princeton.edu.