The Baruch Diversity Debate was the first workshop I attended at Baruch College. It was required by my English professor, Professor Saint, but even then I was very much interested in the topic of Diversity at Baruch. Being my first workshop, I was definitely excited to see what a workshop at Baruch College would be like but I would say that I expected more after completing it.
The workshop was meant to be focused on “Baruch is one of the most diverse U.S. institutions, and So What?” but the majority of the workshop was not what was described, The main speaker, a Nigerian professor from Stony Brook University, Professor Vaughn, concentrated on diversity everywhere else but Baruch throughout his lecture. The majority of his lecture was centered on his experience at Stony Brook and it was difficult to relate it to my experience so far at Baruch College. I did try to apply some of the things he said to my life but after a while I began to lose interest in the lecture and as I looked around the room, I noticed many faculty members with the same problem.
The workshop became interesting to me after Professor Vaughn spoke and it was now time for the board to give their opinions on the topic. An African American Professor at Baruch College described her experiences dealing with students of various ethnicities. She recalled one situation in which an Asian girl, one of her students, was rejected from a Communication course because her English wasn’t as great as her Communication Professor wanted it to be. Another member of the board, a senior currently attending Baruch College also spoke about the diversity at Baruch. He said that even though Baruch is described as the most diverse school in the nation, as you look around the building it is difficult to see. People of the same ethnicity tend to form a circle of friends, isolating themselves from other ethnicities. The various groups of friends at Baruch College are not as diverse as the College describes itself as. This is a problem we should confront and a topic the main speaker, Professor Vaughn, should’ve focused on.