Students indicating their ethnicity on college applications probably do not spend much time considering the implications of that decision on their e-mail inboxes, and yet the Office of Multicultural Affairs considers this check mark to be the ultimate sign of who wants to receive what e-mails. Applicants who indicate that they are of a certain ethnicity are automatically put on e-mail listservs containing information about events, conferences, and internship opportunities. But students who do not identify with a minority group probably have no idea that these listservs even exist.
The OMA maintains that this is out of courtesy. According to its logic, students of certain ethnicities are more likely than others to be interested in “ethnic” events and internships. Why would the OMA send out e-mails that don’t directly apply to an individual when students get so many e-mails a day to begin with? Furthermore, the OMA is open to everyone, and if a student wanted to be added to a listserv, he or she could be.
A student could make such a request, however, only if he or she knew about these e-mails in the first place. Yes, there is a certain magnanimity in not sending students still more newsletters that they won’t read—but to assume that students aren’t interested in events about a particular culture simply because it is not the one in which they were raised seems to go against the very idea of multiculturalism.
To suppose that students who identify as Hispanic and indicate this on an admissions form must want to be on the listserv forces them squarely into whichever box they checked.
All students should be informed about these various listservs upon either their admission or entry into Columbia, beyond just sending out a link with a general description of the OMA. All students—whether or not they are conventionally identified as part of a “minority”—should be given the opportunity to make an informed decision as to whether they want to receive these e-mails.
Columbia is proud of its diversity, but that diversity is more meaningful if it encourages further integration and understanding. The OMA is not the Office of Minority Affairs. Its resources should be used to increase understanding of and generate interest about multiculturalism among the majority as well. A culture cannot be checked on a form, and students cannot fully understand different cultures if they are not even given the chance to know about them.
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