I’m a person. You’re a person. For once let’s actually level with each other about “diversity.” Yes that word is tossed around more than Gimli in “The Two Towers” (don’t tell the elf) but when it comes to the student-initiated Office of Intercultural Affairs (ICA)-sponsored “Multicultural Graduation Celebration we must stop all the tossing.
Correction: The event is not hosted by the office of Inter-Cultural Affairs. It is a student-initiated event, sanctioned by Pepperdine University. Also, the gifts will be symbols of cultural unity, not different gifts tailored to each individual’s background.
For the first time in Pepperdine history, ICA plans to host a Multicultural Graduation Ceremony following in the footsteps of some of our aspirational institutions like Stanford and Duke. Not intended to replace the main graduation ceremony, this special ceremony will be open only to the first 150 students to sign up. Each person will be presented with a $20 gift reflective of the individual’s culture and will be entertained by Italian folk artists. ICA has requested and received funding from both President Andrew K. Benton, Dean Rick Marrs and SGA.
A student body that feels there is a need for a separate ceremony unintentionally shouts separate but equal.”
According to French social theorist Simone de Beauvoir these 150 individuals would be inherently made to be “the Other that which is unlike the whole. Though the intentions driving this multicultural celebration are noble, holding this event will imply that there IS something different about those who attend, that there IS a need for a ceremony outside the graduation ceremony that we experience as a class.
Celebrating individualism is the most genuine acknowledgement of diversity.
And to truly honor each individual, you’d essentially have to hold a separate ceremony for each student, celebrating where each person has come from and the unique hardships surmounted racially, culturally, socio-economically, academically and — wait a second, isn’t that precisely what happens when your name is announced at graduation and you stride across stage to accept your hard-earned diploma from President Benton, holding it up proudly for your parents, your peers and your loved ones to see?
Most importantly, graduations, by definition, are celebrations of achievement. At graduation, we’ll all be sitting in Alumni Park in a spirit of solidarity, all having accomplished the same thing, together, the glorious culmination of years of sleepless nights and quality time spent between the bookshelves of ol’ Payson (There, there, now. Chin up, no tears).
Equally celebrating each person’s culture is not a bad idea on its own. Complementing graduation, a celebration of achievement, with a celebration of culture confuses the message of what graduation is all about. Graduation affirms each individual’s accomplishment here at Pepperdine. Connecting the merit of earning a degree to one’s identified culture does a disservice to the degree, for it says that recognition of merit alone is somehow not enough.
It seems this graduation is birthed out of rebellion to a perceived Pepperdine image rather than out of affirmation of different cultures. This doesn’t sound like an event for WASPs. (If you don’t know what a WASP is, you probably are one.) This exclusion is not stated expressly, but it’s implied. The implication is that only students of targeted backgrounds should apply.
The trouble is, nobody’s background is simple. Does having family that emigrated here within the last 250 years qualify you for this ceremony? What about our international students from countries like Australia and South Africa? Would they feel welcome at this ceremony? Wouldn’t Caucasian students feel as if they were mocking a multicultural celebration? It feels as though this ceremony seeks to include those who are NOT the majority. This is well intentioned, but it ends up creating a group defined in opposition to another, rather than affirming its own unique identity. Once again, the only way to affirm each student’s unique identity is to have a celebration for each individual, a tradition that we conveniently already have – graduation.
This is a symptom of a greater malady on campus. We have an environment of hyper-cultural sensitivity, and when cultural sensitivity is forced, it undermines the very diversity we seek to encourage. Indeed, this multicultural graduation celebration tells us that we are separate from each other, giving life to division where we hope for unity. Having a separate graduation celebration says, We are all especially different.” The trouble is each person is different from each other and a separate venue with limited space cannot properly celebrate that. Only a celebration of each unique person which sounds an awful lot like each graduating student walking across a stage and having his or her name read can properly celebrate pure individualism — real diversity.
However this in no way argues that your culture and heritage are irrelevant components of your identity. In fact we love the idea of ICA hosting a celebration but our message to ICA is that by tying this additional multicultural celebration to graduation it’s missing the mark. ICA events come from an admirable mindset of equality and we’re blessed to have thinkers like that on our campus but with propositions like this one our progress towards diversity is more like a stationary bike — making a lot of motion but ultimately going nowhere.
Think about it: The argument that minorities have had to overcome more hardships than non-minorities is a slight to minorities and belittling to the University’s admissions policy to say that your background uniquely qualifies you for a special celebration. Those who say everyone is qualified and all are welcome should remember what graduation is: a place where everyone is qualified and all are welcome. The takeaway here is clearly that a graduation is recognition of merit not need race or creed. Without intending to a separate celebration of multiculturalism excludes those who sign up late or FEEL unwelcome and exclusion beats diversity every time.