Cultural Education Center Report February 2009

The Need for a Cultural Awareness Center
The incidents of intolerance at Hamilton have been well documented, and indicate the existence of underlying prejudice. The Social Justice Initiative created an incident report form in late October 2007 that was made available to the entire campus to submit anonymously. A selection of the 27 responses (out of 35 total) that described experiencing prejudice provide an anecdotal glimpse of what needs to be changed at Hamilton. (this is not clear—the 27/35)
Was fabbot written this way in the comment? If not, I’d putt the word there. “While sitting in Commons with my best friend, a white male student yelled across the dining hall 'hey colored person.' He then proceeded to justify his statement by saying that 'That's the kind of thing I can say here at Hamilton College and get away with.'” “Walking through a party in Milbank I have been called a faggot.” “During a class discussion, another student was using the term 'poor people' as synonymous with 'black people' and 'rich people' as a synonym for 'white people.'” “Another student began talking to me in Spanish and a white Bon Appetit staff member told him 'speak English, this is America.' My friend ignored him and the guy continued.” “In my [Government] class, I did not feel like I could express any of my opinions because I saw issues from a social and marginalized perspective. I was told that my perspective was inappropriate for the class…. Automatically because my perspective was not respected I did not want to participate.” “I have experienced an incident when two white males referred to an Asian person as a 'f***ing, smart ch**k.' To me this is one specific incident out of many where people will just use derogatory language.” These incident reports, while not a scientific sample, demonstrate that a number of students on campus do experience prejudice. More statistically robust evidence has recently become available through the online survey of Hamilton students conducted by the student group HamPoll in October 2007. While these data were not randomly sampled, the total of 447 responses gives this poll the power to examine the attitudes of a large subset of students (and may allow inferences, especially since the number of multicultural and international students and the spread of class years in the responses were similar to demographic values for Hamilton overall). The results in the HamPoll data show a distressing trend of intolerance on campus. Students who identified as Black, Latino, Asian, or "other races" reported more frequent encounters with prejudice than white students, as listed below. After running multinomial logistic regression models controlling for class year, gender, citizenship status, and a variety of attitudinal questions, many of these racial groups continued to show significant differences from white respondents.

Event Percentage of Students Indicating “Yes”
(* = Significant difference from white respondents in multinomial logistic regression after controlling for demographic and attitudinal factors)
White / Caucasian Black / African American Hispanic / Latino Asian / Pacific Islander Native American Other Race
“Excluded from a social event or activity you wanted to attend at Hamilton because of your race/ethnic origin” 5.10% 30.00% 25.00%* 5.88% 0.00% 23.53%
“Dropped or seriously considered dropping a class at Hamilton because your race or ethnicity was not respected” 2.83 15.00 5.00 2.94 33.33 17.65
“Been ignored IN CLASS after expressing your ideas or sharing your comments because of your race/ethnic origin” 3.97 35.00* 5.00 20.59 33.33 29.41
“Been ignored OUTSIDE THE CLASSROOM after expressing your ideas or sharing your comments because of your race/ethnic origin” 12.18 40.00 45.00 35.29 33.33 29.41
Witnessed “a student embarrassing, patronizing or treating someone negatively because of his/her race/ethnic origin” (summation of two questions) 58.07
70.00 60.00 61.76 66.67 58.82
“Seriously considered leaving Hamilton because of racial or ethnic prejudice” 1.70 35.00 15.00 5.88* (less likely than other groups) 0.00 17.65

It is evident, even from this preliminary analysis of the data, that these significant experiences of prejudice are encountered at very different rates for students of different races.
It should also be noted that this survey contained no questions asking about discrimination due to sexual orientation, gender, national origin, disability, or socioeconomic status. It is likely that further surveys would yield evidence of even more widespread prejudice.

Responding to the Challenge
How could a cultural awareness center work to solve these problems? Firstly, such a program would implement the steps that the polled students viewed as most effective to address diversity issues. The most popular proposal among the options listed in the poll was “better peer education about diversity,” which was rated by 48.55% of students as “very effective” and called ineffective by only 15.44% (the least opposition of any plan). By providing a fixed location for diversity education outside of the context of speakers, multicultural events, or requirements to take diversity classes (all proposals favored less strongly by the student body), a cultural awareness center would meet many students' perceived needs for remedying prejudice.
Secondly, a common concern evinced by students in the personal comments section of the poll suggested that multicultural students segregated themselves from the rest of the campus. Other data in the poll casts some doubt on this notion; while Latino and Asian students were more likely than white students to consider activities reflecting their own cultural background as “very important” in an ordered logit model, all students with such a focus on their own cultural background were also significantly more likely to report that learning about other cultures was important to them. In any case, establishing a dedicated multicultural center could both reduce charges of self-segregation aimed at minority students and provide an opportunity for all students to learn about other cultures (which 86% of students indicated was at least “somewhat” important to them, with 39% considering it “very important.”)
Based on available survey data, Hamilton has compelling reasons to construct a multicultural center. To do so would serve students' needs and take positive steps towards reducing intolerance at the College.


Works Cited
HamPoll, 2007. “Racial/Ethnic Issues: Tell us ANONYMOUSLY!” Online survey. Contact hampoll@hamilton.edu for questions about data. All analyses conducted by Kye Lippold (klippold@hamilton.edu), who takes full responsibility for interpretations herein.