College's Motives Questionable
By Nancy Hanna
Copy Editor

At a time when the Supreme Court is considering the constitutionality of affirmative action policies it is important not only to consider your own position on the issue, but also what informs that position and the way the debate is framed. On the Pomona College website, the Admissions policy states:

"Pomona College continues to evolve and develop with every incoming class. Classes are admitted with the thought that each new student contributes to the community and adds to the development of the college. . . the trustees believe that the College's student body should be drawn from a pool composed of the most intellectually capable and academically committed college-bound students in the nation. From that pool, the College should select students for its entering classes who represent a rich cross-section of backgrounds, talents, experiences and perspectives. This is essential to the creation of a lively and stimulating educational environment that will prepare graduates for life in a changing world."

While I would offer my full support for an admissions policy that attempts to self-consciously create a diverse community, I would question the reasons for pursuing such a goal. The point on which I am ambivalent is the argument that a student body composed of varying backgrounds provides a "stimulating educational environment." While perhaps this argument is appropriate for choosing students of diverse academic strengths, political perspectives, and even geographical position, is this also an appropriate reasoning for admitting students of varying ethnicities? If a concentrated effort to bring more students of color onto the Pomona College campus is based on an argument for a learning experience, several problematic issues are raised. Who is it that supposedly is learning from an increasingly diverse student body?

While the argument might be made that students coming from an often racially segregated school system, may equally benefit from experiencing a different environment, it would seem less likely that students "of color" have had little experience navigating space inhabited by a predominately white population. If this is true, it seems the idea that racial diversity creates a specific learning environment enacts a discourse where the student doing the learning is presumed to be white, and the college attempts to create that learning experience by providing students "of color" for their education. In expecting a diverse student body to "prepare graduates for life in a changing world" it is interesting to ask what work it assumed will be done by students "of color."

I am not sure that I am comfortable with my own presence on campus as being seen as an educational tool or resource solely because of my race. This perspective seems to cast the presence of students of color on campus as some sort of practice for learning how to deal with diversity. It is also problematic to cast this sort of education as the responsibility of students of color who of course do not constitute a homogeneous group or a single perspective from which they might educate other, presumably white students.

While I do think that an education at Pomona College should include a focus on the constituting power of race, gender, and economic realities, I would be more comfortable with this learning to be informed not by individual students,but rather by a concentrated emphasis on such issues within the classroom. Of course, it is important that this learning also reach beyond the classroom and inform students' lives; it is also necessary to recognize that it is inappropriate to expect fellow students to provide that perspective and play that role in the education of their peers.

I offer my full support for the creation of a diverse campus at Pomona College, but I think that creation would be better framed as a recognition of the ways that race, gender, and economic status affect the past experience of students and these influences should be considered in admissions decisions. Rather than viewing racial diversity in the student body as an educational tool, I think increasing racial diversity should be approached as an effort to value the differing histories and experiences as students and an attempt to provide a further education that will take these experiences into account.