What does ‘world diversity’ actually mean?
Taking the plunge to study abroad last spring in Florence, Italy was a defining decision in many ways. It meant giving up my familiar and safe place in townhouse 104 and traveling 3,000 miles to a city and culture that were completely foreign to me. It also meant the chance to see, do, discover, experience and live in a way I never thought I would or could.
At the semester’s end, I reluctantly returned home with a new group of friends and a new outlook on the world. I traveled all over Europe – from Switzerland to the French Riviera to Croatia – and also managed to take classes such as International Marketing, Intercultural Communication and Literature of European Cultures.
Despite the range of internationally focused classes, I would argue that the things I learned outside of the classroom, regarding how to respect, live and function within the accepted norms of other cultures, are what I value the most.
The day before I was supposed to register for classes, however, I discovered that I was currently not eligible for graduation due to an incomplete core curriculum.
Apparently, my four months and countless experiences in foreign countries did not make me worldly diverse in the eyes of Fairfield.
An essential component in Fairfield’s stringent core curriculum, which tends to leave students with ferocious headaches, is the diversity requirement.
Students must take classes that fulfill both U.S. and world diversity requirements in order to graduate.
Though studying abroad for an entire semester does not fulfill a student’s world diversity requirement, students may take courses such as Intro to Asian Theater, Population: Birth, Death and Migration, Confucianism, or Intro to Comparative Politics, instead.
After a brief panic, I eventually acceptance of the fact that, as a second semester senior, I will indeed be taking five classes again.
According to Academic Vice President Orin Grossman, my time and experiences in Europe wouldn’t have counted toward the world diversity component because European countries are excluded.
I will admit that I am unsure of why that is and wonder if my classmates who did study in China and Latin America are more worldly diverse than a student who studied abroad in Europe; surely they at least should be exempt from the world diversity course requirement.
How will studying the anthropology of the genders expound on my world perspective? Although I’m sure the class will teach me a lot, I am unsure of how “the study of human beings similarity to and divergence from other animals” within the context of gender will expand my knowledge of world diversity.
I applaud Fairfield’s recent push to make the student body more diverse through recruitment and the diversity grants, but believe that perhaps it might be worthwhile to consider letting a student interested and bold enough to leave the Fairfield bubble for a semester slide by with that world diversity credit.
When I graduate in May, I will take away with me the world perspective I gained by studying abroad and will proceed with life considering myself an individual aware of global diversity, and it probably won’t be from taking Anthropology of Gender.
Leave a Reply