College Matters

One of the most poignant discoveries I made during my year of AmeriCorps service is the concept of poverty extending far beyond racial divisions. Prior to my year of service, I lived in Lubbock, Texas, the epitome of racially defined income class constructs. With few - if any! - exceptions, all of the African-American residents live on one side of town - the poor side. The houses are falling apart, streets are all cracked and strewn with potholes, and the drainage is so terrible that every time it rains the entire side of the town reeks. Caucasian residents live on the other side of town - the affluent side. There are certainly different degrees of affluence, but without exception, that side of Lubbock consists of middle class and up. Nothing below. The college, Texas Tech, echoes this division in a way; if you see a person of color on the Texas Tech campus, you can almost guarantee that he or she is either a) an athlete or b) from another country.

The first six months I lived in Lubbock, I was completely confused. I moved to Lubbock from Huntsville, Texas, a prison town that is extremely diverse in both population and income class distribution. Huntsville has the interesting distinction of being both a college town and a prison town, so the two major employers are the Texas State Prison System and Sam Houston State University. Employees for both come in all colors, and they live next door to one another. I arrived in Lubbock, and during that first six months I didn’t see an African American, at all. It was bizarre. I thought that perhaps the town entirely consisted of Caucasians with a few Hispanic-Americans. Then, one day, I got lost, and ended up on the east side of Lubbock. Lo and behold, I discovered a different color palette…and discovered a lot of poverty.

After living in Lubbock for six years, my mind had unhappily adjusted to the notion of poverty being inextricably linked to race. I had certainly known both poor and rich people of all colors, growing up in Houston, but I began to think that this was only the case in the urban environment.

Then I moved to Belfast, Maine. Belfast, the county seat of Waldo County, is a small community, with about 6,000 year round residents. During tourism season we have more than that, but no one pays any attention to the tourists. Belfast just pays attention to their money! Belfast’s population is predominantly Caucasian, as is most of Maine. Even Portland, the biggest city, has little racial diversity. My college roommate, Shamyra Pope, would jokingly generalize that it’s because African Americans aren’t crazy enough to live somewhere as cold as Maine. Generally in Belfast when you meet a person of color, he or she was adopted into a Caucasian family as an infant.

Waldo County happens to have quite a bit of poverty, too. Obviously it has nothing to do with race; in fact, adopted kids of all colors often come from wealthier families, because it takes quite a bit of financial chutzpah to adopt an infant in the first place. Waldo County, despite the tourism industry, remains an overwhelmingly impoverished rural county. There are people who live in this county that have no running water. Granted, that’s exceptional, but it does exist. Other examples of poverty are much more widespread. Some people have gas heating but can’t afford the gas. Living in a place where temperatures falls significantly below zero degrees Fahrenheit in the winter, that’s a problem. Another example: many, many children are on the free-lunch program at school, and that’s often the best or only meal they get per day. The Game Loft, where I served as a VISTA (and where I continue to volunteer) aims to change that, offering all children who walk through the door a full and nutritious meal. This is essential in the summer, while school is not in session.

This has all drastically altered the face of poverty for me; it has been truly transformational. In light of this eye-opening experience, I’d like to post the following advice, dealing with racism - it’s reminiscent of things I saw in high school, in Houston. A person from Nigeria attends school in the U.S., and is accused of being a “traitor” by other African American students, because this person has Caucasian friends.

College has multiple purposes, not the least of which is to expose individuals to new information. This includes meeting different types of people. We tend to identify these differences by ethnicity and religion, but differences in personality, learning styles, and varying disabilities, qualify as part of this learning experience as well.

That’s the best argument I’ve heard that applies to both minority and disability scholarships. College is supposed to broaden our individual horizons. We are thus robbed of an important part of our educational experience if our campuses lack diversity. Minority scholarships arguably contribute to greater cultural understanding and breadth in college, and disability scholarships do the same.

I received an email from a college student with an autistic brother. She doesn’t want her brother to miss out on the college experience because of his mental disability. Autism is unique and still not well-understood by even the medical and educational experts; autistic individuals don’t cope well learning in a traditional special education classroom, alongside other mental disabilities such as Down’s Syndrome, but they lack the intuition necessary to function normally in a normal classroom.

I’ve always wanted to personally get to know someone with autism. I want to ask a person what it’s like and be able to understand, firsthand, the perspective of someone with this condition. So, I’m interested in this girl’s idea, for reasons that go beyond her brother – I think that if he’s academically capable, he might provide his fellow students with more diversity in their educational experience – he embodies the reasons I’m in favor of minority and disability scholarships. I’m interested in everyone else’s thoughts, though, so please comment!

I get questions on a weekly basis asking me about Greek life on the American college campus. It is most definitely an American phenomenon, although the Greek societies themselves may propagate their European heritage. Universities outside of the U.S. have nothing to compare to fraternities and sororities. While all campuses have some sort of social pulse, including student clubs and other organizations, only American colleges offer the clubs that become entire lifestyles: fraternities and sororities.

Even within the U.S., there’s a division in this cultural lifestyle that’s divided by the Mason-Dixon line. Southern America places much more emphasis on size (number of members), exclusivity, and appearances along with historical social customs – manner of dress, initiation rituals, styles of dance, formal events, etc., while in the northern regions Greek organizations are often smaller, with fewer “rules.” They also don’t experience the degree of rivalry expressed by their southern counterparts.

There are numerous reasons to join a Greek organization; the best one I’ve heard is that it’s an excellent way for a shy student to find a social niche and a sense of belonging. It’s a way to facilitate the transition from high school to college. However, the reason I hear the most often is for “networking” purposes. I agree that networking is an important part of pursuing a career, and definitely a part that should begin in college. However, I disagree with the idea that Greek life offers the best way to network, especially in the south, where the rivalries between the different Greek societies by definition creates as many negative connections as positive.

I’ve had greater success in one week with career-oriented networking on Twitter than my former roommate had during three and a half years as an active member in a fraternity. After graduation, he spent nearly a decade at a job he hated, because he didn’t get into the grad school program he chose and he couldn’t find a job he liked through his connections with his fraternity brothers.

Edustir posted an interesting article about the responsibilities and uses of online social networking tools – like Twitter – to higher education. It’s an excellent article, and it does emphasize the work that must be put into social media in order to have a positive experience. The work put into social networking media on the internet, though, is much less than the efforts put into four years of Greek society, and it seems to have greater lifetime potential.

I’ve recently had the opportunity to connect with Dorm Delicious, a site that provides dorm decorating advice, which is an important part of making your dorm feel more like your own personal space - making it feel like home away from home. Of course, in most dorm situations, it’s not just your space - you share very close quarters with at least one other person. It reminded me of an advice question I answered a few months ago, from an only child freaked out at the thought of being cramped together with any other human being.

Even though it’s shared space, you can decorate it to make it more personal. Better yet, it’s a way to get to know the random stranger to whom you’ve been assigned for at least a semester. It’s an opportunity to take a trip to Target together and pick out curtains, lamps, shower curtains, etc. There are ways of combining everyone’s tastes, and there’s no better way to learn compromise and creativity than to live with a random stranger within the confines of a dorm room. Dorm Delicious offers a way for this to be even more of a bonding experience, too - they regularly hold a dorm decorating contest, which you and your new roommate could enter together! So check out their site - and don’t forget to give me your opinions on the only child’s fears about the dorms, and my accompanying advice.

Interesting issue: is it beneficial to allow students to bring pets into the dorms? With all of the new trends in pet therapy, isn’t it obvious that pets provide comfort, especially in stress-filled situations?

My answer to the second question would be, “Yes, of course,” but the first - hmm. I’d have to say it depends. While yes, pets are an essential part of many people’s lives (myself included, that’s my buddy Merlin in the picture at the top of this post) and bring great joy to their human companions, in the wrong hands they can be a great big hassle, too. It’s obvious that a specific building would have to be set up for students with pets, so that those with pet-allergies could avoid pet dander. The potential problems extend far beyond that, though.

I have this image of college students coming in from the bar and not letting the dog out or changing the litter box or whatever. Then, when they do walk the dog or other outside-trained animal, I can see many students conveniently “forgetting” to pick up the waste - and then suddenly, you’ve got an entire campus covered with poo (or a campus that has to hire an extra-expensive gardening team!). There are certainly ways to combat this, with written policy, but actually enforcing such policy would be costly and time-consuming.

Even worse, I read an article that quoted one female student as saying pets in dorms would be a problem because “We’d all abandon them.” Excuse me? So much for “comfort.” There are universities across the country that are trying to ignore irresponsible examples like that one and offer pet-friendly dorms, as in this, a different article; I’m looking forward to seeing the results.

My advice to the student who wrote to me involved deferred admission and a year at community college; see what you think here.

I feel very lucky to have connected with a fantastic organization, Al-Jamiat, that assists international students with a desire to come to college in the U.S. Al-Jamiat’s specific focus is upon students from the mid-east, but they are happy to assist any international student. I received an email several days ago from a biotechnology student in Sri Lanka interested in coming over here, and I referred him to Al-Jamiat - and he told me they’ve been very helpful - he’s specifically receiving assistance and support from Ms. Wassan Humadi, the managing editor of Al-Jamiat’s bi-annual magazine as well as their website. I’m so excited - Ms. Humadi is actually giving me the opportunity to contribute to the magazine and potentially assist with some Q&A at the site! The picture above is from this year’s university fair, at their stop in Manama, Bahrain.

It’s really interesting - and eye-opening - to listen to Ms. Humadi’s experiences. She came over here to college from Saudi Arabia, and apparently people wouldn’t stop bombarding her with questions about what they assumed was her barbarian background…asking her how she possibly could have purchased something as modern as denim jeans, for example. It made me think of my own experiences (albeit to a much lesser degree) with my relatives in New York who assumed that because I was from Texas I must have ridden a horse to school. I told Ms. Humadi about that - and the same relatives probably would have asked if she had ridden a camel to school. It’s so wonderful that we have organizations like this to prove that we really have much more in common than we may initially think.

I just posted an interesting quandary that some of us might find enviable - a minority high school student has been recruited to play football (on scholarship) at one of the “Big 12″ teams (see the advice column for an explanation in case you’re unfamiliar) and has also received an offer for a scholarship to an Ivy League school.

What’s especially fascinating about this question is the degree to which it polarizes everyone I speak with. Inevitably, if the person is a football fanatic, he or she quickly says “Big 12, obviously.” If, on the other hand, the person is an academic or simply uninterested in football, he or she is equally convinced that the answer is “obviously” the Ivy League school.

I don’t think it’s so obvious. I tried to give the student some helpful advice that may help him make this extraordinarily personal - and life changing - decision. See what you think, and please feel free to criticize. The only reason I have comments on this site on “moderate first” is so that I don’t have a bunch of unrelated spam auto-posting - so I promise, I post everything legitimate, including criticism!

I received a letter from a student about university library fines. Initially, perhaps this seems like a relatively trivial issue; however, when a student has lost books, fines multiply rapidly. It’s not unusual for a university library to charge upwards of $200 for a lost book. On first glance, that seems excessive. Appearances are deceiving.

My job at the library introduced me to the joys of acquisitions. That’s only slightly sarcastic, because it was actually exciting to get to decide which items to purchase. Plus, a large part of my experience at the library involved film acquisition, and I’m a film buff (though definitely not a film expert). What I found interesting was the policy of publishers concerning cost of materials and university libraries. Publishing companies are, by nature, capitalistic. They are corporations seeking to maximize profit. They recognize that when they sell a book to a university library, they are sacrificing multiple potential sales. With that in mind, they charge libraries much more than individuals for any given item.

So when a book is lost, the library is not looking at the base cost of a book on Amazon. Library employees have to put time and effort into acquiring another copy directly from the publisher at a marked up price. However, when a book is donated to a university, the library circumvents this problem. Most university libraries will lessen fines or eradicate them altogether if a student replaces a lost book by purchasing a copy. It has to be in decent condition, but it doesn’t matter what the student pays for it.

What can you do when your roommate is your polar opposite? And is it better to room with a dear friend who you know is your opposite, or should you instead rely on random chance to hook you up with someone random who may be nearer to your personality and style?

While I’d opt for the former, which influenced how I advised this high school senior, I think there should be a third option. Someone should set up an “eHarmony” for college students seeking roommates. At my college, we were randomly thrown together, although generally within a class. Freshmen were paired with freshmen, sophomores paired with sophomores, etc. This randomness does serve a purpose, too, other than making things easier for the university: it does offer incoming students a chance to get to know someone outside of their own little world. However, there are personality characteristics that transcend culture and ethnicity – for example, as with the scenario I just advised, one person is obsessively organized and the other is excessively scatterbrained.

I know there’s a “roommates.com” – I’ve used it. But it doesn’t offer nearly the comprehensive personality evaluation as sites like eHarmony. I understand the thought process; visitors to eHarmony are searching for a lifetime romantic partner, so personality combinations are even more important, as this is a search for permanency. But I’d like to see universities set up some sort of personality quiz, even a brief, abbreviated version, and then match up roommates utilizing that. Better yet, some entrepreneur should come up with a site like that and then hawk it to the universities. Any other ideas?

I just posted an advice column from a question I received (and answered) February 6, 2009. Check it out here. While I understand the student’s frustration at the racial stereotypes being imposed upon her parents, I actually see this as a potentially positive thing. One of the benefits of college is supposed to be learning about others outside of your “norm,” your preconceived notions, and your culture. So, although the student is justifiably irritated, because her roommate’s friends assumed that the student’s mom (of Vietnamese descent) is all brains and her Dad (African-American) is all athlete, she has an opportunity to educate someone and perhaps change the person’s view. I hope she’s able to get beyond her aggravation and do so. Every single one of us is an individual, culturally influenced but not defined by mere skin pigment. We’re all multi-faceted - and hopefully college is the opportunity to see the multiple stripes of everyone’s individuality.