When I arrived at Columbia University, I wore jeans, a dress
shirt, and a backpack. I did my best to look like a deer in
headlights to convey that I was a college freshman. I wasn’t, of
course. But my disguise lacked both an access card to enter any
of the buildings and a yellow orientation badge. Getting into
Columbia is tough, but for a conservative journalist, getting
into Freshman Orientation was tougher.
The main event was “Community Forum,” where first-year students
get to “acknowledge the importance of social activism and
diversity on campus.” The following day would bring a workshop on
sexual health called “Consent and You.” Who would want to miss
them? The orientation packet was reassuring in marketing both the
events: “Required of all students.”
It’s fortunate that I always run into people I know in the
strangest places. I bumped into an old friend from college who,
amused at my mission, rolled her eyes and got me in. The event
speaker, a spunky and “diverse” college veteran, knew the right
formula for a multicultural speech. First, she acknowledged how
differences have brought people together: “In light of our
differences we have all arrived at the same point in time and
space…” Then she emphasized the commonality: “…At an academically
challenging institution in the heart of New York City…” Next,
she passive-aggressively told us to get with the program: “We
hope that by the end of the night you’ll be able to appreciate
the ties that bind together…” She finished by assuring us that
each of us was special: “…while celebrating the uniqueness of
each individual in the room.”
A screen behind the speakers that had previously shown Maya
Angelou quotes turned to a painfully earnest video chronicling
Columbia’s admirable history of “social activism.” Highlights
included the effort to admit women into the university and
(un-ironically) a high-profile lecture featuring Iranian thinker
and sometime dictator Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The video also
justified the campus’s famous 1960s protests as a response to the
deterioration of life in the inner city, the rise of the women’s
rights movement, and the Vietnam War. These protests, the
narrator went on, were peaceful. That would have been a shock to
my grandfather, who, on his way to work on the campus during
those troubled times, donned riot gear. The lights came back on.
The speaker returned to the podium and called our attention to
the variously colored flyers distributed at the beginning of the
program. “If you have a green flyer, please stand.” She explained
that these were randomly distributed but there was enough of
every color to represent the proportion of minority groups on
campus. It would give students a good visual example of the
diversity in the Class of 2012.
Obediently, a number of students stood, scattered across the
auditorium, both male and female. “This group represents the
number of lesbian students in your class.” Both sexes quirked
their eyebrows. “And these are the number of Asian Americans in
your class.” A large swath of the audience stood. Students
laughed at a confirmed stereotype, but were told to shush. “And
these are the number of African Americans.” White students stood
sheepishly as a few seated black students cheered. Orientation
leaders approached microphones next to the stage to read
admissions essays of anonymous freshmen. One was a girl who
self-identified as a boy because her parents didn’t want a
daughter. Another was handicapped. Another was gay. And another
was raised in war-torn Sarajevo, with a childhood marked by the
struggle to survive. Faces in the audience continually grew
serious. We may have been diverse, but we were united in our
empathy for the hardships of those who were more diverse. One
student told me during the freshman scavenger hunt following the
program, “It was good to remind people of diversity.” Why? I
asked. “Uh. Because it brings awareness about others’
experiences? That sounds corny, doesn’t it.” She then ran off to
her assigned orientation group.
She was excited, though not by the diversity. She was excited by
her new station in life. She had arrived “at this point in time
and space” with a bunch of other 18-year-olds. Columbia could
hold all the diversity workshops it wanted, but this was a
four-year sleepover, and these students would enjoy every second
of it.
Of course, the mandatory sexual health workshop was another
story.
J. Peter Freire is managing editor of The American Spectator and
a 2008 Phillips Foundation Fellow.
