Saint Anselm College
$aint An$elm $tudent$ are not all the $ame
Many people say that all Saint A’s students are all the same; personally, I feel that we are all so very different. Being a liberal arts college, kids with different backgrounds and different personallities come from all over to pursue their studies in a variety of majors.
In the case of saint anselm college, there are many students who a re legacies: whose mother, brother, sister, grandfather and second-cousin-once-removed have all gone to saint a’s, so they really don’t have much a choice when deciding which college to go to and have been decked out in “SAC” clothes since they were a child. Then we have the majority of kids whose parents pay for everything, they drive brand new cars into the Baroody parking lot freshman year and bring their clothes down to the cleaners to have someone else wash and fold their clothes rather than use the laundry room in the basement. Finally we have the select few that com to college with every penny they have saved from the two jobs they worked over the summer and continue to work during the school year. These kids pay for everything themselves and will probably be drowning in debt six months after they graduate.
The overall outer impression of Saint A’s students are that they are all very polite and mesh well together. All that is true, but when it comes to people’s economic situations, separations occur even amongst friends. The more fortunate students do not care if a less fortuante student can’t afford to do something; they just go on and do what they want to go and do and leave the other student on campus.
It is difficult to describe the Saint A’s campus situation unless you are a student who has experienced it yourself. I ask for other students and/or faculty to follow up on this post and tell whether or not you are aware of this economic diversity on campus and how could it be resolved.
| Print article | This entry was posted by JRJ on February 2, 2011 at 9:39 PM, and is filed under BLOG: Add Your Voice, Cultural and Economic Diversity, Uncategorized. Follow any responses to this post through RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed. |
about 11 years ago
This is the most dumbed down thing I have read in a long, long time. You throw all 2,000+ students into three generalized categories. I mean, aren’t we supposed to be thinking about diversity? and how each and every one of us is different in our own way? I don’t know a single person whose parents pay for everything, or who takes his laundry to the cleaner (you’re probably offended that I say “his” and not “their” or “his/ her,” excuse me for being grammatically correct). If you ask me, diversity means tolerating (not accepting) everybody regardless of religion, ethnicity, or socio-economic status, NOT making generalizations and throwing the entire student body, with no accuracy, into one of three categories.
about 11 years ago
I’m so very sorry for my harsh language in that last post. I was offended at first by what I saw as a “dumbed down” perception of economic diversity. You make a good point though, there certainly is a great deal of economic diversity among St. Anselm students, I’m just think that it can be a difficult subject because there is not a whole lot that can be done about it, besides I think diversity is something we should be seeking, not resolving. The more diversity the better, even if that means economic diversity, you know?