As tours full of admitted students flock to campus this month, the Office of Admissions is hard at work showcasing Tufts' diversity and the varying life stories its students represent.
In the midst of conversations dedicated to racial relations on campus, the bid for the Tufts Community Union (TCU) Senate presidency is shedding some light on work being done by the Senate to unite what many students feel is a racially segregated campus.
The Senate seeks to represent the various races, orientations, religions and interests of Tufts students by electing a small and diverse sample of the school's population. According to junior Jennifer Bailey, chair of the Senate's Culture, Ethnicity and Community Affairs (CECA) committee, the Senate has a particularly strong minority representation.
"I think Senate as a body has a history of great leaders, including minorities, especially this year," said Bailey, who is black.
According to Bailey, minority representation is far more important than a statistic to print in admissions booklets - it provides the range of perspectives and experiences represented in the general Tufts population.
"[Minority students] represent an experience that isn't had by everyone at Tufts," Bailey said.
Sophomore TCU presidential candidate C.J. Mourning, who is also black, agreed that minority perspectives are important in the Senate and other leadership roles on campus.
"It's important for leaders to represent the student population," she said.
But despite the impact of diversity within Tufts' student government, Bailey said she believes that the self-segregation of student groups is a major issue on campus. Minority students become involved in their own cultural groups and choose to live with others who identify with similar interests and experiences, she said.
Bailey explained that the same organizations that can provide minorities with support can also segregate them from the rest of the Tuftscommunity.
As a result, she said that some minority students at Tufts feel isolated.
But in light of such a trend, Bailey said she believes that the infrastructure to unite all different types of students does not exist at Tufts.
"We're good at coming up with the numbers," Bailey said, referring to work accomplished by the Office of Admissions. "But once we get here, how do we interact with each other?"
But sophomore Edna Gonzalez, who lives in the Latino Culture House and serves as the community representative to the Senate for the Association of Latino Students (ALAS), disagreed with Bailey and said that she does not believe culture houses work to further segregate students.
"I don't think the culture houses isolate students; instead they provide a space for students who might not feel included on campus," she told the Daily in an e-mail. "Some students who live in culture houses are actually very active on campus."
Gonzalez said that while the Senate is working on increasing communication between student groups, such efforts are still works in progress.
"It's helpful having the community representatives in Senate in order to be better informed on what the Senate is doing and what recommendations they would like to propose that might affect different communities on Tufts campus," she said.
In addition to the CECA committee within the Senate, Students for Unity is another organization that seeks to unite and foster collaboration between different groups.
Sophomore Duncan Pickard, another TCU Senate presidential candidate, is involved in both CECA and Students
for Unity.
Pickard, who is white, said that lack of unity between cultural groups is not simply a minority issue because related problems affect the entire student body and community. He cited a crisis of community identity on campus.
"[We're missing] what connects us as students," he said. Students for Unity and CECA, he said, are increasing collaboration between student groups and unifying the whole student body.
Pickard said that in its efforts to foster better racial relations on campus, the Senate "does a good job of including [minorities] in the decision-making process but could do a better job."
Bailey agreed with Pickard that the Senate has the ability to improve unity on campus.
"We're very divided on campus," Bailey said. "But we could learn so much by sitting down and having a conversation with each other."
Junior Elton Sykes, who is also running for the TCU Senate presidency, said that race is a taboo topic on the Hill and that more candor regarding race would be beneficial.
"When it comes to race, it seems that people get kind of timid," said Sykes, who is black. "If we can be that adamant about the Iraq war, then we should be able to have an important discussion about race on this campus."
Sykes also suggested the administration play a greater role in improving discussion. "The administration needs to do a better job on the support systems," he said.
But the junior also emphasized personal responsibility with regard to integrating the student body and breaking down the barriers of what he referred to as "self-segregation."
"You can't force people to be friends with someone they if they don't want to be," Sykes said. "People have their own personal responsibility to branch out on their own, but I don't think that is the administration's job."
Carrie Battan contributed reporting to this article.
