Thursday, September 25, 2008

Diversity

Diversity in college is what makes the college experience even better. Without diversity, people would not be open to people from different backgrounds or cultures due to the lack of communicating with anyone that is different from them. Ernest Pascarella wrote a journal article on how diversity affects students in college and he stated in the article that students “demonstrate statistically significant shifts in the direction of greater social, racial, ethnic, and political tolerance and greater support for individual rights.” Diversity promotes different point of views, better social skills, and tolerance for other people among college students.

Those student that are open to communicate with people with different aspects of life gain knowledge from those students and acquire different point of views. A student who might be Christian might meet someone that belongs to the Buddhism religion and get to learn about that specific religion. They may not have the same opinion, but at least the student is open to hearing the other student. Getting to know people from diverse places enables students to have a better view of the world and not necessarily generalize people by the way they look.

Also, communicating with people that come from different origins allows students to have better social skills. Students learn that people act differently to certain situations and that almost everyone will have a different outlook. When talking to more people, students start to feel more comfortable speaking to different people. Also, this could give students the confidence that they needed to be able to speak to others. There is nothing wrong speaking to someone that is different from you, people need to be more open and communicate with everyone.

To conclude, having a diverse college builds student’s tolerance for other college students. For example, a student might get irritated easily when it comes to a certain topic, but when conversing with other students with different point of views, they can see that they don’t always have the answer. Also, students are more open to people from different backgrounds and that builds their tolerance for all sorts of different people. The world today is extremely diverse; students need to get accustomed to dealing with people that are different from them.

6 comments:

CupofToast said...

I think it is very true how is builds tolerance. We need to become more accepting of others.

JAZMIN said...

I agree with you. I think if communicate better with others will make us a better person, not only that we will have people who can help us in some way.

Lindsay said...

So true that it gives us a better understanding how to talk to different types of people!

Anonymous said...

I totally agree, one of the best parts of college is the diversity! As long as you don't try and change other peoples ways, such as their religion or views, it will build tolerance and eventually acceptance.

Anonymous said...

I love how my high school was very diverse since it's nothing "new" to me as I entered into ASU. I can easily adapt to the different types of people, without having difficultly trying to figure out how to communicate with different types of people. I believe my high school was one of the most diverse schools in the Phoenix area.

At first I didn't know what in the world the word "diversity" meant. I always heard my US History teacher repeat this word, just as other things that never 'clicked' in my head.

I realized what diversity meant when I looked up the definition (laughs). I quickly realized how I was already in a high school (and now at ASU too) that was diverse. It's a good skill to have in the future as our country becomes more diverse.

zuniga42 said...

I agree with you that without diversity in the world people wouldn’t be open to different backgrounds, races, religious, ethnicities, ect. It is important that we are not ignorant of others peoples lifestyles and up bringing and we accept people for who they are.