Pitts is a junior English Writing major from Indianapolis.
CHRISTA SCHROEDEL / THE DEPAUW
I’ve been watching this controversy unfold over my past two years at DePauw. I don’t have any solutions, but I have some ideas.
I think in order to make strides towards equality on campus, we must first lay out the problem in plain terms. What I see is a campus dominated by a social structure long-rooted in this school’s tradition. Greek life has been a part of DePauw nearly since it’s founding over 175 years ago. And it’s no question that DePauw is a predominantly white school. As a result, DePauw has grown and flourished as an institution where the majority of the student population is white and Greek-affiliated. It has been, and continues to be this way.
However, the non-white populace on campus is growing and is more prevalent than ever right now. The growth of the minority on campus poses a question to DePauw’s social tradition: how does it adapt? Now that the social structure is confronted by a student population that it cannot completely satisfy, how does it change?
Therein lies the problem. It seems that so far, the answer to this question has been simply not to change. This failure to change is what leaves the minority student population to feel largely ignored. The majority upholds the traditional DePauw social structure and fails to acknowledge the growing minority presence because it’s not required to. The majority can live the way it wants to without being affected by the minority’s presence. And so, the minority is left with an overwhelming feeling of exclusion. And more so, disrespect.
Right now, the minority is knocking on a door that gets answered only by the school and its faculty. We have Cultural Resource Centers, a new Intercultural Life newsletter, and on Wednesday, we had a day off of classes to talk about this issue. All of the faculty’s efforts mean nothing unless the students answer that knock at the door too. If we want to establish a community of respect, we must answer the call to change from our fellow students.
Being a member of the majority myself, I say: whether we like it or not, we have a responsibility. No matter who you are, you can view change as a good thing or you can view change as a bad thing, but either way—it’s inevitable. All you can do is embrace it with open arms and a progressive state of mind. What’s changing now is who is on our campus. And we have a responsibility to cater to this change, regardless of tradition. This campus, this school belongs to all DePauw students—to neglect this is to neglect our peers themselves and give up a bit of our own human decency.
I’m not saying that no one is trying to make a change or that people are ignorant to the problem at hand. What I’m saying is that the power for change is in the hands of the majority. The student population can no longer coexist with the traditional DePauw social structure—a structure that fails to respect all people alike.