On Diversity

Maureen Dowd--a columnist I frequently *don't* read despite her excellent writing, because in my opinion she's a glorified gossip--had a really good essay this morning. It was the second online piece I've read this week that got me started thinking about my college days and how things have definitely changed; the first one was this NPR blurb about the cost of college dorms, which had me reflecting with some amusement about the house where some friends of mine (hi, Mark and Ish!) lived. I seem to recall they patched holes in the wall using Crest, but I may be misremembering.

Anyway, I realize that we Old Fogies tend to think of today's youth as being coddled little hothouse flowers, and that our Old Fogie parents thought the same of us. And in fact, I know a number of people who went off to the same colleges as their high school friends and made arrangements to room with them at college. So this isn't entirely a new thing, of course. And there is something to be said for making sure in advance that if you're an asthmatic who has to work two jobs, you're not paired up with a chainsmoker who parties every night until 2 a.m.

Still, though, I have to agree with MoDo on this one. Being forced to mix it up with people you wouldn't choose on your own really is good for you. The girl who was my roommate my first three semesters of college is someone with whom I never in a million years would have been matched in any Facebook service. Me: Overly boisterous cheerleader from the middle of a wheatfield in Kansas, optimist, person whose study habits could best be described as Whatever Is Required To Get Your Assignments Done At The Last Minute. She: NYC-raised daughter of Korean immigrant parents, quiet, someone who I'm convinced studied 6 hours a day because she actually found it enjoyable. What's more, she had an extremely rough Freshman year. Her mother had committed suicide the previous spring, right before her high school graduation; shortly before Spring Break of our Freshman year, her father followed suit. But as unlikely a pair as we were, we got along very well. Well enough, in fact, to room together voluntarily for a semester the following year before she'd finally had enough of rowdy dorm life and transferred to different housing (and, eventually, to a campus closer to her home, which I think she needed). She wasn't my best friend at college, but we were definitely friends and we gained a lot from living together.

There's no question, I think, that I became a better person from being thrown into a cinderblock dormitory (a masterpiece of Neo-Stalinist architecture) and compelled to interact with a bunch of people from wildly diverse backgrounds--many of whom I would not necessarily have chosen as friends and roommates if left entirely to my own devices as an 18-year-old. Kids should have to spend at least a few years of their lives being forced to deal with people who are very unlike themselves, and who in fact sometimes are unpleasant and incompatible. I like to think that one of my better people skills is the ability to see things from perspectives other than my own, and the fact that while I certainly am opinionated I'm not especially judgmental. These are handy traits to have in general, and are actually pretty critical when one does criminal defense. Those traits were developed in part during my time at Oberlin.

And Dowd's point about a narcissistic and micro-targeted society in general is great. In fact, that's one of the things I'm convinced has completely ossified our political process. We as a population live in far more politically homogeneous communities than we did 20 or 30 years ago (full disclosure: this is very true of my own community, which is lovely and pretty uniformly liberal, and admittedly that's one of the things I like about it). I don't think that's entirely the reason that the past decade or so has seen the election of wild partisans who are less interested in getting anything accomplished than they are in base-pandering, but it has to be a contributing factor. Side note: One would think that it might occur to them that their chances of getting re-elected might improve if they, you know, actually accomplished stuff, but apparently not so much.

But in any event, all this does worry me a bit about when my girls go off to school. Will college be easier for them if they get to live with people whose backgrounds, study habits, housekeeping tendencies, and political/social viewpoints are exactly like theirs? Without question, just as it will be easier for them if their parents fork over for a dorm that has jacuzzis and a heated pool. So what? Whoever said it was supposed to be easy?