Every fall, we are bombarded with the portrait of the incoming freshman class, highlighting their lofty test scores, impressive accomplishments and perhaps with the most pride, their unprecedented diversity.
While I am continually amazed by Tufts' ability to draw students from every corner of the globe, I can't help but feel that our self−congratulating is a bit undeserved. The truth behind the statistics is that the type of diversity we talk about at Tufts overwhelmingly shares a particular mold, with the flagrant exclusion of certain groups.
Rural, working−class segments of the American population face multiple hurdles on their path to the admissions office. Not only are these students generally white, thus failing to fulfill more ostensible measures of diversity, but they also tend to be more culturally aligned with the right, which doesn't mesh well with the elite college conception of what a "diverse" student looks and thinks like. A card−carrying NRA member from North Dakota certainly isn't the first image that comes to mind.
This problem is certainly not endemic to Tufts. A 2009 Princeton study of admissions trends at highly selective universities found that lower−income white students were three times less likely to receive admission as their higher−income white peers with similar qualifications. (The opposite held true for minorities.) The study also found that involvement in activities like R.O.T.C. and Future Farmers of America actually negatively impacted the students' rates of admission, elucidating just how out of touch higher education is with vast pockets of the nation, namely those from red states and rural upbringings. I realize that conservative farmers from Oklahoma are not applying to Tufts in droves, and the responsibility does not lie exclusively with the admissions office. I also understand that however large and idealistic our desire for equal access to our academic halls, our financial constraints do have to be realistically assessed.
But our proclaimed moral high ground in admissions considerations underscores the glaring hypocrisy that is all too prevalent in academia, and it downplays the role of economics in our policies. In the midst of all the self−righteous gloating over our large international community, the administration forgets to mention that our peers that hail from abroad also happen to constitute a financial gain for the university, as they receive proportionally far less financial aid than the general student body. This is hardly an altruistic endeavor.
This is not to take away from the indisputable value that international students bring to Tufts. But if we are genuine in our diversity pursuits, we need to more creatively assess our targets and make economic diversity a top priority. This means striving to attract students who might not agree with the general Tufts consensus. Our lack of interaction with more socially conservative America has allowed us to nurse an assumption that it is composed of malicious bigots deprived of any sort of intellectual calculations. Not only are these lines of thinking untrue; they're debilitating. As a liberal, it's hard to resist being lured into the false comfort of believing the world inside academia is a microcosm of the outside world.
The real losers in our policies of exclusion are not only those left out, but also those that make it in. When a class discusses the housing collapse without a member who knows the personal face to foreclosure, when a teacher mocks Southern fundamentalism without worrying that a student might take offense, when a group derides the environmental policies of farmers without including anyone who has ever seen a field plowed, we lose something big.
As open−minded as we may perceive ourselves to be, we are shutting out a huge portion of the America that exists outside the idealistic gates of our university, and we amplify an already−existing schism between the educated elite and the rest.
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Amanda Johnson is a senior majoring in international relations. She can be reached at Amanda.Johnson@tufts.edu.
