NSOP Diversity Training Stumbles

Weeks before first-years arrived, the committee that organized the New Student Orientation Program had diversity training of its own. And while it was intended to repair rifts among the students, many members said that the program was divisive and offensive.

Facilitators from the Office of Multicultural Affairs and the Living and Learning Center who ran the event asked the students to split up into two "caucuses": one for students of color and one for white students. Some participants said they were offended by the exercise and felt that the groups oversimplified the issues.

"It wasn't so much diversity training as anti-oppression training, with pretty much all Caucasian people listed as oppressors," Jonathan Mason, CC '08, said, calling the makeshift racial divisions "offensive."

NSOP coordinator Cindy Horowitz, CC '09, requested the session in early August, responding to comments voiced earlier in the summer that unsettled some members of minority groups in the committee.

Horowitz said that the students used the time to voice concerns but that the program was not entirely successful.

"I feel like it failed," Horowitz said. "I really tried so hard to make us work, and I feel like now it's just worse."

Other participants echoed Horowitz, concluding that the program was more hurtful than beneficial. Mason said that even after students complained, the training facilitators carried on.

"They didn't really seem bothered that we were offended. They just continued," he said.

Another committee member, who asked to remain anonymous because of the sensitivity of the issue, called the session "an extremely polarizing and uncomfortable experience."

Horowitz, who did not have a part in designing the training, said she regretted how the program unfolded.

"I'm sorry that people were offended by it, because that was definitely not my intention," she said. "We had a really meaty discussion ... Maybe they'll realize that it was meant to be something good."

Assistant Dean of Student Affairs Melinda Aquino, who organized and facilitated part of the program, defended its methods and goals.

"Conversations are always going to be uncomfortable when confronting diversity ... So, resistance, personal upset, those are all understandable in a process," she said.

The program was designed specifically for student leaders, as opposed to the diversity training sessions offered to first-years during this year's orientation. Aquino said that the discussion was created to recognize the "real social constructs that we all operate in that have historically, socially, sometimes personally, created divisions."