Chris Kemp

Diversity is not something that comes to mind right away when I think about UW-Eau Claire. Walking around campus, one sees a large majority of, well, white majorities.

Clearly, this is something that can’t be changed completely because this is Wisconsin, but somehow I feel the fact that we’re in the middle of the rural Midwest shouldn’t be an excuse for the lack of diversity on campus.

According to collegeview.com, UW-Eau Claire’s minority representation totals 6 percent, with 1 percent of students coming from American Indian/Alaskan Native heritage, 3 percent Asian/Pacific Islander, 1 percent Black/Non-Hispanic and 1 percent Hispanic/Latino. Not exactly the melting pot of America.

I feel that we, as a university, do lose something with the lack of diversity we have on campus, and our perspective is skewed because we don’t get to experience different cultures.

However, our university does a fantastic job of promoting diversity and the awareness of it on campus. The diversity programs here do a good job of building up what little diversity we have, as well as make the majority of students more involved and immersed in other cultures.

As many of you might not know, April is Native American Awareness month. There have been a number of events that have really celebrated Native American culture and promoted knowledge of cultural customs. Months like this are excellent for getting students involved in diverse cultures. They create awareness of diversity and give cultures a platform to create awareness of what they are.

It’s clear the lack of diversity on our campus still remains a problem, though. I’ve noticed the ways the university has tried to rectify this by placing more racially diverse students on our promotional material.

This can create other issues however, like the fact the brochures are inaccurately representing our university’s minority population.

The truth is the number of minorities depicted doesn’t represent the actual population of our campus.

There also is the issue of creating a sense of equality in our promotional material, meaning the brochures can’t be completely white people on every picture either.

So, how do you find a balance between the two, or can you even have both? In other words, how do you create an equal representation of minorities and majorities on campus literature while making it accurately representative of our campus community?

We can both equally represent while accurately representing. This can be accomplished by, yes, having a good mix of all races in our brochures. Yet, at the same time, we need to let prospective students know that, yes, our campus is composed of a largely white majority.

In addition, however, our campus does do its best to provide a fair amount of classes, forums and informational meetings about diversity and other cultures. It also is mandatory that each student fulfill a diversity requirement before they graduate.

This requirement is necessary because it gives students an insight into another culture. The more we can all learn about each other and where we all come from, the more students will be understanding and accepting of other people.

It’s just another thing that helps make us more well-rounded and a more understanding generation.

Speaking as a Korean-American who has lived in Minneapolis for almost all of his life, I feel that diversity is a very important part of developing up into the best people we can be.

In my own personal experience, I have seen diversity create barriers, as well as tear down walls. The more we are exposed to diversity and the more we know about different cultures, the better prepared we are to face diversity in the real world.

The more diversity we can expose everyone to and the more we all can learn about each other, the fewer barriers there will be in the future.

Horrmann is a sophomore print journalism major and a sports editor of The Spectator.