"Is Dartmouth's public relations emphasis on diversity too great? ... And why should it try to convince outsiders [that it is diverse]?"Because Dartmouth is better known for The Review than for the fact that it ranked 10th in Hispanic Magazine's Top 25 colleges for Latinos. (Dartmouth also ranked 47th on Black Enterprise's Top 50)
Because a lot of students at Dartmouth don't care where Dartmouth ranks on lists like those, and that is not a secret—to applicants or to students.
Because diversity is not just another column to compare against other Ivies; it is part of our mission, part of our reason for continued existence. If it's a commitment, it's a commitment, and we should goddamn well say so.
Oh, come on. Take a breath before you write this stuff. Baron's column isn't all that well-written, but he has a point. Dartmouth spends a lot of effort advertising its "diversity" to get students to choose it over other schools, and his argument is that Dartmouth should match its PR campaign to its actual strengths, because it's not actually that diverse, and it undersells its other strengths in the process. Maybe he should work for Buzzflood if he's into second-guessing Dartmouth's PR strategy, but I suspect you've encountered many more idiotic Dartmouth students.
ReplyDeleteAlso, where do you get the idea that diversity is "part of our mission, part of our reason for continued existence"? It's a good idea, and I suppose Dartmouth's mission of education and turning out future leaders is fairly broad in scope (i.e. not limited to educating rich white kids and turning out rich white leaders), but I don't think it's "part of our reason for continued existence."