Living King's Dream:
The Student Support Network, A 21st-Century Concept
Nasha London-Vargas
Workplace Institute
Students live in a diverse world. The university will need to provide students
with the opportunities to rehearse what they will encounter in their
everyday lives before and after graduation. Students, including all students of
color and White students, need hands-on experience in college to practice
working together. We can get along if we change the perceptions of who we
are and how we can solve problems. Racial and ethnic conflict must become
less relevant social forces, as an exchange for what is a fundamental
human engagement. Students must learn to share responsibility for their
environment. Martin Luther King's dream to "transform the dangling
discord of our nation into a beautiful symphony of brotherhood[and to]
be able to work together, to pray together, and that we will one day live
in a nation where we will not be judged by the color of our skin but by
the content of our character," has to be put into practice in every
fabric of the university.
The proliferation of cultural backgrounds on college campuses brings
to the surface a variety of values, work ethics, and norms of behavior. How
colleges define issues of diversity will impact all social lifelife on the
streets and life at work. Educational institutions have a social
obligation and a unique opportunity to prepare their students for everyday
experiences as well as to prepare them for vocations. University activities
must shift their emphasis from just recruitment to enabling students to
meet on common grounds of mutual effort and benefit. But how might the
university prepare students for the everyday life that is integrated and
that fulfills King's dream?
The university and the community should be used as a laboratory in which
students can conduct and participate in real-life work. College and universities
have several domains for working and learning, which are often segregated
from one another: the classroom, residence halls, community service
departments, and campus life organizations. Students must engage in community
projects that utilize student life outside of the classroom to consciously
and purposely bring students from diverse cultural backgrounds into
activities that compel them to experience each other as persons. Students should
also experience educational institutions as environments in which they
engage one another daily. The real world is the university.
Since there will be changes in the social and cultural composition of the
workforce, the university should become the site where opportunities are offered
relevant to the kinds of social transformations expected in the next
century. If these universities are able to offer some sort of continuity between
contexts of vocation, students and educational institutions might continue
to be in a life-long relationship of learning and re-tooling. The work lives
of today's students will include continued training, education, and development;
therefore, students will need to see the relevance of a college education.
Students need to practice how to utilize resources, develop resources, and solve
social and technical problems in their communities.
As educators, we also need to create opportunities for all students
(especially minority students) to involve them in the life of the university as
they speak to each other about concerns specific to their own group and to
the student population as a whole. We can offer all students the opportunity
to empower themselves as associates in situations that bring them closer
to the American creed: "We hold these truths to be self-evident that
all men are created equal." Why not have students develop healthy work habits
in a relatively risk-free environment, but not responsibility-free environment?
It is in integrated work groups on college campuses that students might
find truth in the American dream. For society, the experiments would not
be a high risk; we could begin to eliminate the current enormous social,
political, and economic costs by institutionally responding to the
necessity of mediating the issues of diversity. At the university level,
the usual investments in student programs (work-study) might increase
slightly, but the effectiveness of these programs would increase.
To the contrary, if we do not utilize the university and all its potential
to develop workers for the next century, the quality of life of our
citizens will suffer. The quality of life at work and in communities is what
the university must have as an essential mission. Education must be liberal
in action. We can encourage healthier intergroup relations by placing
students in situations in which they will encounter one another as peers and
workers on a daily basis. Developing a student support network, which utilizes
work-study and volunteer activities, is fundamental for initiating student
engagement with the university and the surrounding community. Within this
network, students assume leadership roles, and are encouraged to propose,
develop, and facilitate programs and activities. This organizational
design is conducive for students to add value to their work, and to
become more familiar with one another (culturally, ethnically, and racially).
We all know that working together is an old idea that brings about community:
barn-raising, knitting circles, and small groups that work together for
short periods at conferences to share and receive information. A student support
network socializes students by becoming a mirror of citizenship. The
student support network has the capacity to deliver experiences that make
connections between the practical conduct of life at work. Students
within the student support network are allowed to experiment with the
appropriate skills and knowledge to respond well to diversity issues
which may interfere with work. Students also benefit from mutual support
while building on- and off-campus communities. Such support is instrumental
for students to learn what community efforts entail and to experience the
joys of being citizens together.
Diversity must be an essential business of the university and its minority
affairs efforts for the next century. A fundamental mission of the university
must include opportunities for students to practice what they must know
to engage in ethnic and cultural diversity in the neighborhood and in the
workplace. It is becoming clear that today's students are already in a
diverse world, but many institutions of learning are unaware of these demographic
changes or they are not sure what measures to take in managing the
diversity on their campuses. Many minority affairs offices on college and university
campuses continue to strive towards implementing Martin Luther King's
dream of inclusion; yet their mission statements do not fully represent
the demographics of today's campuses. There is no longer, if there ever
was, a culturally homogeneous Black, Asian, Native American, or Latino(a) group.
The issue of living and working together is still a primary social problem;
in fact, it is essential for a healthy society.
In the 21st Century, no one will be an island unto himself. The workforce
of the year 2000 will consist primarily of minorities, women, older age
groups, immigrants, and an increasing gap between workers with advanced
education and those workers who can barely read or write. Demographers argue
that the workforce of the future will greatly differ from the workforce
of the past in that, until recently, White males made up the dominant
work group and Blacks and Latinos were the only visible ethnic groups.
The new workforce will reflect a wide variety of Asian cultures, a mixture
of Middle Eastern and Arab cultures; women, Latinos, and Blacks will represent
the fastest growing minority groups in the United States. Students today reflect
much of the demographics. Graduates will work in a different milieu than
many students in previous decades in the United States. Leaders will be
required to be more attentive to previously ignored issues of difference.
Thus, our students will need opportunities to rehearse what they will
encounter at work.
As gatekeepers, we have the social responsibility within the minority community
to shepherd all minority students through a process where there are
adequate opportunities for counseling, advising, academic assistance, employment,
and space and time for gathering together to dialogue and develop
citizenship. We should also make it our duty to create a safe place on
campus for all students to freely explore and experience who they are in
relation to one another. Through a student support network, minority and
nonminority students will be able to co-create a learning and living
environment that supports and promotes tolerance and acceptance of their
differences.
As we move into the 21st Century, we will need all levels of society
to respond to issues of diversity. The work activity of the student should
become the model in which students can shape, define, refine, and
continue to discover ways to explore their notions of race relations,
leadership, team work, citizenship, and community building.
If you are interested in discussing these ideas further, please e-mail me at nachey@email.msn.com
or nachey@msn.com.
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