By Victoria Neely, Special to The Chronicle
In these past few weeks at Hofstra, I have encountered a significant amount of diversity among students and faculty. Meeting people from right here on Long Island, my home state of California, and all the way from England or Afghanistan, has been a very rewarding experience.
The "D" of the Hofstra P.R.I.D.E. principles is "diversity and community," which includes students learning to accept people of all different backgrounds and ethnicities. Hofstra takes pride in the wide range of people who attend this university, but this intense concentration may lead some to speculate that the school tries too hard to maintain its reputation as a diverse school.
When students fill out an application to any college, they are asked to "check the box" of the ethnic background they believe they belong to. Many students have complained that they dislike being squeezed into a category, and that any college should decide acceptance based on merit rather than race. Do colleges, including Hofstra, judge their applicants on which little box they check off, or do they have the right to try their best to create a racially diverse community?
My answer is the latter. Diversity is defined by more than which race someone is. It's where people lived before they came here, and their sex, religion, age, and so on.
Even though I am one of many students who checked the little box that read "Caucasian," I still contribute to the diversity at Hofstra because I have different talents, interests, and life experiences than many people I've met here.
Hofstra doesn't judge by a little checked box. The school is simply trying to keep its door wide open to people from all over the world.
My hometown in California was not nearly as diverse as the Hofstra community has proved to be so far. While there, I found that colleges did not make it a point to draw students from all over the world to their school nearly as much as Hofstra does. I have visited schools in California at which the students all appeared strikingly similar.
Being at a college that fosters such a large amount of people from all over has comforted me, as I know that I'm not the only one going through a large adjustment.
Each person I have met at Hofstra so far has had an interesting story to tell about life back home, and I value the fact that everyone is very different than what I am used to.
A diverse community should never be considered a bad thing. It teaches us not to judge students based on what color they are or where their parents are from, but simply to create a place where everyone can feel at home, no matter how far away their real home is.
Diversity at Hofstra proves rewarding (Isobel Stanton)