Diverging to DEI

This week in class, we watched a presentation on how to format our posters for our HAP’s. It was interesting to see how information can be presented in so many different ways and little changes can determine if a viewer will stay to read your poster or not. During the discussion for the readings, we digressed from the main subject and began to talk about the DEI requirement for the university. Though this requirement has good intentions, many students try to find easy ways to fulfill this requirement, which contradicts its purpose. We are supposed to take classes that teach us the diversity of our world and how to be inclusive of others, but because people try to take the easy way out, they end up learning nothing. For my DEI requirement, I took DOC, which is Marshall’s writing sequence, and an EDS class which also counted for DEI. Both those classes were very eye opening as to what the real world is like towards differing races and perspectives. Yet because the EDS class required me to go to elementary classrooms and gain hands-on experience rather than just reading about it in a textbook, the impact the class had on me was far greater than any class I had ever taken. I feel that they should change the DEI requirement to be something requiring out of classroom experiences so that people can truly learn and understand what diversity and no diversity looks like outside of our school. Also, many EDS classes need more students to enroll so that they can provide mentors for the children, and making it a requirement for students will result in a huge increase in the number of college mentors for younger children.