Views On Vassar | College needs to foster inter-cultural understanding

Tendai Musakwa Opinions Editor

I am black. Overwhelmingly afro-centric, I am also a devout Catholic and come from a socio-economic background best described as “poor.” It is easy at Vassar, with its predominantly white, middle-class student body, for me to feel nostalgic at times for the community that I come from: a community that consists of people with similar viewpoints to mine. In a true liberal arts college, however, I should not feel this way. In spite of the fact that Vassar is a liberal arts college, I still feel that students here do not possess that liberal way of thinking that would help them begin to understand the cultural and social diversity of American society and the world at large.

A Vassar education, among the best in the nation, is touted in the Vassar College Mission Statement as “thorough, well-proportioned and liberal.” Upon further examination of the mission statement, an interesting phrase might catch one’s eye: “Vassar College is committed to working toward a more just, diverse, egalitarian, and inclusive college community.”

I contend that the College does not provide its students with skills to respond sensitively and intelligently to peoples of varied social backgrounds and cultural frameworks. Vassar does not nurture and foster open-mindedness, but instead completely brainwashes its students to have a homogenous “independence of mind” that I would describe as non-conformity.

The lack of a core curriculum in a Vassar education does not produce the liberal-minded individuals we might believe it does. Even though most of us chose Vassar precisely because it does not have a core curriculum, thereby lending us the freedom to experiment, many others chose it specifically because they would not have to take a wide range of courses. Because of this, if someone were sure of what they wanted to concentrate in, they would only take classes pertaining to that specific subject area and not others. Even though we have a rule which states that we as students have to take 20 percent of their courses outside their major discipline, this can be circumvented if a student has taken Advanced Placement tests outside their major discipline or is taking a multi-disciplinary major. The ability to do this obviously does not foster a broader mind outlook, but rather inhibits it.

A more liberal education is needed to produce the cosmopolitan students that liberal arts colleges desire and pride themselves on producing. Williams College, for example, requires all students to take a course exploring African, Asian or Caribbean culture in addition to a language, social science, and physical science or math course. If students learn about a culture other than their own, like they do at Williams, they will not be caught up in the American bubble of ignorance that students at Vassar may be rightly accused of.

A good liberal arts education increases one’s capacity to understand and enjoy humanity’s cultural achievements. An important way in which this is possible is through dialogue and interaction between students of various cultural backgrounds. College-wide, out-of-class dialogue on important socio-cultural issues is something sorely lacking at Vassar. While other colleges have forums in which students and speakers have presentations and discussions on various global and contemporary issues, Vassar has yet to follow their example. Vassar does invite speakers to address the community on various occasions, but more often than not, these presentations do not incite dialogue between students themselves. Community discussions held in dorms have poor attendance and are usually not on current socio-political issues affecting the United States or the world in general. If we are to become liberal-minded individuals, we need dialogue on contemporary issues, and the College should work to ensure that this dialogue is present among students.

German educationalist Kurt Hahn believed that much could be done to overcome hostility and conflict if young people from different backgrounds could be brought together in educational institutions to promote inter-cultural understanding. At Vassar, we need to interact with more people from different cultural backgrounds rather than only interacting with the homogenous student body here. Even though students frequently go abroad to learn in different settings, there is still much that can be done within Vassar to promote inter-cultural understanding. This may include inviting college students from other culturally diverse colleges to attend classes and socialize with our own students. I applaud the Vassar men’s basketball team for inviting the Israeli Basketball team, “Israel at Heart,” for a friendly match. We need interactions such as these to ensure that we become the liberal-minded, culturally aware individuals needed in an increasingly interconnected world.