Let's promote diversity! I would like to personally give a shout-out to all the admissions people and applaud you for your promotion of diversity on this campus. Class of 2007, you are the most diverse group to ever walk the hallowed halls of our prestigious University. Not only that, but apparently you are the most intelligent as well (even though they say that EVERY year). Boy, oh boy. What an exciting era we live in.
Some people would say unto us that our campus is not diverse. I would say unto them, "Look around you. Don't you see that every single student is unique? We may be 75 percent Caucasian/non-Hispanic, but some people have different hair colors. Don't you understand that although an average of 80 percent of each incoming class participated in varsity athletics, some played different sports? How can people claim that our institution is anything but diverse? Just because we have more Mikes, Matts, and Katies per square foot than any school in the United States, maybe even the world, doesn't change the fact that we are diverse! Notre Dame even spells diversity, of course, if you add a 's' and 'i' and a 'v,' and then take away the 'o' and the 'm' and the 'a,' but you get the point."
We promote diversity! Although "alternative lifestyles" aren't accepted, that doesn't mean they don't exist. Sure, we don't recognize them officially, but sometimes we let them advertise in The Observer. Besides, alternative lifestyles happen all the time here. Every single day I see people alternating between working out at Rolfs and the Rock. You see diversity is so much more than ethnicity or cultural heritage. We have tall people, short people and even in-between people. We have both squirrels AND chipmunks; geese AND ducks; rain AND snow. And if I am not mistaken, DeBartolo is definitely not an Irish last name, is it?
We are so diverse that even our diversity is diverse. Not everyone that comes to this school is from Chicago or Ohio, for instance. I, personally, am from the great state of North Carolina. You see, even I add to our diversity. Hey, not everyone is pre-med either. OK, so maybe the freshman class has a disproportionate amount of pre-med majors, but that will change. They still have time. I mean, who wants to walk around the lakes the first weekend with a lowly art major after parietals have broken up all the dorm parties? If you are going to marry the first person with whom you frolic on dark scary paths, late at night, while still buzzed from excessive warm Natty-Light consumption, you might as well aim high.
I am proud of our diversity. The University is even finding new, exciting ways to make us even more so. (Note to self: University and diversity rhyme.) If smoking is banned from campus, for instance, then people will have to choose between Nicorette and the Patch, yet another example of diversity. I am more of a gum person myself, but someone else may need that 24-hour protection the patch provides. Even the new alcohol policy promotes diversity. OK, so not really, but I am sure if you think hard enough you could pretend it did.
Let's join our diversely-shaped hands with those of our administration and promote even more diversity. Every single person on this campus, from the faculty, to the staff, to the students, to Monk Malloy himself, has a different set of fingerprints. Nowhere else but Notre Dame will you find a more diverse student body of individuals who all played diverse sports, are members of a diverse range of clubs and service organizations and come from such a diverse range of upper-middle class suburban backgrounds. Hey, even our GPAs in high school were diverse. Some people made 4.00s, and some 3.99s, and if schools used weighted GPAs, then even more diversity exists than previously thought.
Hurrah for Notre Dame! Hurrah for you! Hurrah for me! Hurrah for diversity!
Stephanie HortonseniorBreen-Phillips HallOct. 10
