Unity needs to come before diversity

One of the biggest issues on this campus has been one of diversity. If you were paying attention at all last week you might have noticed that our beloved TCU Daily Skiff pretty much dedicated an entire issue to it.

Ever since Chancellor Michael Ferrari began his reign here, it has always been one of his top priorities for the advancement of this ridiculous institution.

Diversity is stressed as something we should be striving for here. However, there is a problem with being so concerned with diversity, and most people overlook it. The problem is that an excessive concern for diversity neglects unity.

Unity must come first, or diversity is somewhat meaningless, unless your sole goal for diversity is merely to raise enrollment statistics to bring in more money for the school.

I shall give Ferrari the benefit of the doubt, though. Surely he fights for diversity to make our campus a better place to go to school.
It is obvious from walking around TCU that it is not as harmonious as it could be. There will always be the differences between faculty and students. It’s inherent in the structure.

What about the students themselves?

Of course, we all have different interests and majors, but we can all relate to classes and studying. The community in which we spend so much time is very divided and cliquish.

The glaring divisions in the student body make it tough for a person to feel a sense of unity. There is the Greek system, which supplies girls and boys with little clubs that for the most part keep their members in their own buildings.

The athletes pretty much keep to themselves.

Then there are the non-native clubs like International Students Association and Students for Asian and Indian Cultural Awareness that draw lines. Finally, there are those like myself that don’t do a whole hell of a lot and only fraternize with other folks that don’t like to get involved with any of the clubs named above, so we go ahead and form our own non-labeled groups.

While providing our students with many benefits, it’s hard to say these groups promote unity within the student body.

I’m not suggesting there are not exceptions to the rule. But on the whole, it is still right to call such instances of unity an exception because most of us are afraid to cross boundaries or to let others into our perimeter of comfort.

If TCU wants to continue to strive for diversity, that’s fine. It will surely raise the number of people that go here.

Then we can have larger numbers of Japanese students and athletes that still don’t care about each other and more fraternities and sororities that don’t really want their members associating with other members of the Greek society.

The rest of us who stay out of those things and aren’t from other countries will continue to bring in sympathizers and stay apathetic.
Come on TCU, quit screwing around. We must be together before we are diverse. Otherwise diversity is utterly meaningless.

Rick Perez is a senior philosophy major from El Paso.
He can be reached at (r.e.perez@student.tcu.edu)

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