For all the statistical diversity that the Tufts campus boasts, many students feel that the campus population tends to segregate itself - if the opinions expressed at a forum held Tuesday night are any indication.
Members of the Sigma Phi Epsilon fraternity led a discussion about segregation and other bias-related issues at the forum in Cabot Auditorium, to which faculty and students contributed.
To open the event, student readers presented fourteen anonymous student-submitted stories that dealt with issues concerning race, religion and sexual orientation.
A straight male recounted his experience at the dance that kicked off this year's campus "Gay-pril" celebration. He wrote that he felt uncomfortable getting looks from other men while dancing with some female friends. One of the girls told him, "Now you know how we feel at a dance."
Another student criticized Hillel, arguing that the organization excludes non-Jews: "They say they are the chosen people. It's just for Jews; I'm not Jewish and it excludes everyone else."
Some students said in their stories that they felt there is nothing wrong with the formation of groups of similar people: "I feel comfortable with my Asian-American friends because we have similar experiences," one student wrote.
Other anecdotes included a conservative student's struggle in mainly liberal professors' classes and a fraternity member who tried to avoid negative judgment from his professors.
Dean of Students Bruce Reitman, who attended Tuesday's discussion, said that he was pleased with the direction of the discourse and with the participation of the crowd.
Reitman found it refreshing that "this many people come here and talk about these difficult issues, not because of a tragedy or because they were assigned to be here, but because they want to feel a part of and change the community."
"A discussion like this hasn't happened in ages," he said.
Following the anecdotes, Psychology Professor Nalini Ambady talked about the psychological reasons that people categorize other people.
"Categorization is a natural shortcut so that we don't have to re-assess everything we see," she said. "When we see green meat, we don't have to eat it, get sick, and then re-assess it; we know not to eat it in the first place."
Ambady then explained that everyone enters social situations with the fear of being rejected.
"White people come to meetings worried about if they will be perceived as racist, [while] minorities worry about being a stereotype," Ambady said. "And everyone is worried about being rejected."
After Ambady spoke, Assistant Director of Peace and Justice Studies Dale Bryan addressed the audience on white privilege and class-based issues at Tufts.
Bryan shared his personal story of growing up in a working-class tobacco farming family, asserting that economic vulnerability is seemingly invisible to students at Tufts.
"It will take a concerted effort to understand how systems of oppression work, and it will take a concerted effort to change those systems," Bryan said.
An open discussion section followed in which participants asked questions and shared personal stories.
Event organizer and senior Doug Glandon conceived the idea of this public discussion after attending a Bias Intervention Team Mocktail event held in the fall. He met a female student at the Mocktail who told him a personal story of racial ignorance and the use of slurs on campus.
"I was shocked that in our liberal bubble it could happen," Glandon said. "I have been here for four years and I try to pay attention, but I didn't know about occurrences like hers."
"This is one more step in a large process; one part of a dialogue that we hope to have started that will continue here at Tufts," Glandon told the Daily.
Tuesday's event was co-sponsored by the Bias Intervention Team, Pangea and the Midnight Cafe.
Interviews conducted by the Daily with other campus community members found evidence of "cliquishness," but also a willingness of overcome it.
"There's always been cliques, starting in the playgrounds of preschools," junior Davit Nguyen said. "They'll continue into our professional careers."
"I think cliques definitely exist on campus," sophomore Megan Carter said. "However, I think you'd be hard-pressed to find someplace where they don't."
"[Cliques at Tufts] are nothing like high school, where clique lines can be drawn arbitrarily according to a few people's subjective interpretation of 'cool,' but they're still there," sophomore Kat Round said.
"I don't see them as defined by something so vapid as popularity, but something that establishes more common interest between people, be it sports teams, clubs, or ethnicity," Round added.
Junior Robert Kim, who was not involved with the forum but does serve as Chair of the Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate Committee on Cultural, Ethnic and Community Affairs (CECA).
"No matter where you go, you can't live in a bubble. Wherever you go there will be people of other races or religions," he said.
Forums and similar events, he said, seek to educate people about such issues.
"A lot of students don't think it exists, or they recognize it, and just don't really care," he said.
Education-oriented programs - and CECA - can help develop a common basis of peer interaction, Kim said: "You can't force people to like each other, but you can ask them to respect each other."
The challenge, he said, is to include "every single member of the University."
"I've attended a lot of these talks, and I notice I see the same people over and over," Kim said. "If you're preaching to the choir, it doesn't have much effect."
"In order to break out of these cliques, people need to be willing to feel uncomfortable," Nguyen said. "They need to do something different, attend events that they would not normally, join a new club, but most importantly they need to be active in this process."
The organizer of the event had hoped for just that.
"The idea to hold the forum was sparked by a general student sentiment on campus that we are such a diverse place, but that we don't make full use of that diversity," Glandon said.
- Kat Schmidt, Aaron Schumacher and Bruce Hamilton contributed reporting to this article.
