Jonathan Miller Guest Writer

Hypocrisy is no stranger at a college information session. Admissions officers all make the same claims that looking at an application holistically makes their college unique, and that using SAT scores as a way to determine whether or not to look at an application makes the SAT of minor importance in the process. As far as I know, neither are true on this planet. Therefore, for freshmen who come from hearing dozens of these talking points, it may not come as a surprise that Vassar would begin its orientation with an unnecessary diversity session laced with irony.

The presentation consisted of actors reading stories written by Vassar students about their experiences being outside the social norm at college. Almost all described an incident of discrimination or a lack of understanding that occurred on campus, and how the writer felt about the incident.

What could have been an opportunity to better orient freshman with the College instead turned out to be counterproductive. The most blatant hypocrisy was that the session took place at all. The admissions page of Vassar’s Web site claims the campus is a “very accepting atmosphere where people feel comfortable expressing themselves openly” and that “diversity of opinion is respected.”

So why need a session that describes discrimination on campus? The other glaring irony was that collectively, the stories depicted Vassar as a place of rampant racism, sexism, materialism and superficiality. Anyone who’s been here even a day can tell that none of that is true. However, for freshmen who haven’t yet been on campus for 24 hours, it can be mildly disconcerting.

But hypocrisy here wouldn’t be so terrible if the presentation were able to make a significant difference. However, exposing freshmen to the diversity of the community through a snapshot of discrimination and misunderstanding is pointless, as spending a week here will more than prove that Vassar is a diverse community.

If it were absolutely necessary to reinforce that message, it could have been conveyed without making Vassar sound like a place of insensitive boobs. The goal of making students aware that their words and actions can affect people in unanticipated ways succeeded on the level of making some students speak in a more politically correct manner, but at the expense of making the entire freshman class acutely aware of their differences. And at the expense of Polish jokes.

Nevertheless, the mission of the session was noble. With college campuses becoming increasingly diverse, few students have encountered so many people so different from themselves, and there’s no guarantee that everyone is willing to accept those differences. Colleges have been trying (with mixed success) to artificially diversify schools for years, and Vassar already does a great service to cultural integration by not having ethnic or religious-based housing.

Whereas some college campuses make it easy to find people of your own ethnicity or ideology and stick with them all four years, students are encouraged through numerous means to meet different people at Vassar. Its institutionalized assimilation of all sorts of people works far better for the ideal of peaceful diversity, rather than a presentation warning of the emotional impact of discrimination.

So what, ultimately, was the result of the session? Increased sensitivity? No racist in the room could have given up his or her prejudices within the 45-minute session, but plenty of freshmen suddenly felt constrained by the necessity of being aware of our differences. Orientation would have been better off without it.