On Tuesday night, Sigma Phi Epsilon sponsored a campus-wide discussion and forum on diversity and cliques at Tufts. In front of a packed Cabot Auditorium, readers presented anonymously-submitted stories about incidents of bias and segregation at Tufts.
This kind of discussion is sorely-needed, and the forum's high turnout indicates that it is a discussion Tufts students are ready to have.
Tufts is somewhat diverse and relatively tolerant. But tolerance does not preclude cliquishness and self-segregation.
Groups that peacefully co-exist without interacting are hardly embodying the dream of an integrated, enlightened college campus.
And whether anybody can force the issue, or should even try to, it's a reality worth acknowledging and discussing.
Cliquishness is natural; it's simply not possible to be friends with all the thousands of other Tufts undergraduates. And friendships tend to be made - and sustained - around shared interests, hobbies or activities.
Since many of the student organizations at Tufts revolve around culture, race and religion (there are about 40 such registered organizations, more than the number of pre-professional, academic, community service, a capella and student government organizations combined), it's no surprise that more friendships are formed within ethnic groups than between them.
Furthermore, shared experience as a member of a minority group can be a compelling foundation for friendship. Students at the forum spoke about feeling especially comfortable with members of their own ethnic background.
Other students, however, expressed resentment at student groups which are designed for one group of people at the exclusion of others.
Tufts makes extensive and laudable efforts to cultivate a diverse student body, and these efforts have proved reasonably successful.
But part of what makes diversity so desirable for a university is the idea that all students benefit from interaction with people of different backgrounds than their own.
If students of different backgrounds don't interact with one another, some of the stated benefits of diversity are undermined.
The solution, it seems, is for students to enjoy what is positive about clique-based relationships without rejecting other kinds of friendships. But this is easy to recommend and impossible to impose.
Nobody - not the Bias Intervention Team, and definitely not the administration - can make Tufts look like it does in the brochures: self-consciously multiracial groups of friends sitting under trees together.
Students are in charge of making their own decisions and forging their own friendships. But conversations like Tuesday's forum allow students to be honest with each other about what motivates and prevents friendships, and to take a realistic look at how the Tufts social scene operates. Acknowledging the reality of cliquishness on campus is the first step towards changing it.
The number of contributors to the forum, as well as the discussion's high turnout, demonstrates that issues of cliquishness and diversity resonate with Tufts students.
While mandatory Bias Incident meetings have never been particularly well-received by students, the success of Tuesday's forum indicates students' willingness to examine and debate issues of bias and diversity on their own time.
The forum, hopefully, will prompt more conversation. And conversation is where friendship usually begins.
