Letter to the Editor:
Look further than Summer Welcome
Published March 12, 2010
As someone who has been involved with Summer Welcome Wellness Skits for the last two years, I think that perhaps we're doing more than you give us credit for. The Wellness Skits that address rape and alcohol also include diversity skits, in which actors share their personal experiences with diversity at Mizzou. In the past few years, these stories have included the LGBTQ community, mental illness, ethnicity, religion, and confronting diversity for the first time after living in a small town.
Granted, we're not perfect and I would like to see more time given to diversity topics, but there's a limit to how much can be fit in to two days. Incoming freshman already get a lot of information thrown at them, a lot of which will be forgotten before they even start classes in the fall. The goal of Summer Welcome isn't to overwhelm students with new information, but to make them comfortable with the major life change they'll be making in a few months. Another training might just get lost in the chaos.
In the end, an hour session on diversity is not what will change student attitudes for the long term. We need to provide projects and education throughout their years at Mizzou. There is more bureaucracy to wade through, but a diversity general education requirement has much more potential to start a real dialogue on the issues. Let's not settle for small tweaks in existing programs, but instead seek a deeper and more meaningful change in the system.
