As a freshman who lives in Keeney Quad, I often walk by the John Carter Brown Library, where the words “Speak to the Past and It Shall Teach Thee” are fittingly carved in stone. Some might regard this exhortation as more than passing strange. But, as a nascent classicist, I particularly like it.
That is why I have been pleased to recognize the echo of the past in President Simmons’ mission to create campus unity through intellectual inclusion and tolerance. For, whether it is the lyric poetry of the Greek Alcaeus or the political writings of the American James Madison, there are voices from the past that speak to us about the need for social cohesion in the face of factional division.
Given the fractious self-interest that sometimes divides campus life at Brown, President Simmons’ message of unity ought to have a strong resonance for all Brunonians. I know it has for me. It is comforting to be accepted, rather than marginalized, by a university president who shares my belief that civility and inclusion are necessary preconditions for an intellectual community.
Though President Simmons’ message of inclusion is to be applauded, there are some who question whether there was a countervailing force of exclusion at work in freshman orientation, one that threatened to divide, rather than unify the freshman class.
What they refer to is the Third World Transition Program (TWTP), an orientation program that by operation, if not by design, branded freshmen with “third world” status even before classes began.
As Karen McLaurin, the dean of the Third World Center (TWC), explains, TWTP employs the term “third world” to describe students of color at Brown. For Dean McLaurin, this term conveys a positive sense of “empowerment” for students of color, one which the TWC website describes as representing a “third way” between the first world of America and Western Europe and the second world of Russia and Eastern Europe.
However, some ask whether TWTP’s “third way” is at odds with President Simmons’ policy of intellectual inclusion. Because TWTP is a program that orients students to the university, they believe that it should be as intellectually diverse as the university itself. However, as intellectual diversity entails a variety of perspectives, they wonder how TWTP can achieve that goal if it excludes the western culture that is an indispensable part of that intellectual diversity?
Dean McLaurin is sensitive to these concerns. She is a welcoming woman, one who tries to reach out to the entire Brown community. For her, the “third way” of TWTP is not a rigid ideological position. Rather, it is a proven means by which students can unite under a “common identity,” which breaks through the boundaries of race and class. According to her, this “third way” presents the best means to fuse factional beliefs, that is, to allow individuals to become “who they want to be” free of racial or ethnic stereotypes.
Though these aims are laudable, some would probe whether TWTP achieves them. If individuals are to become “who they want to be,” their freedom should not be circumscribed by any political orthodoxy, whether it is liberal or conservative. However, those who question TWTP ask whether it is motivated by just such a factional ideology. If it were otherwise, they say, why would the TWC website explain that “the real focus [of TWTP] is an exploration of the systems of oppression that exist in our society today, including racism, classism, sexism, homophobia, and heterosexism”?
Dean McLaurin does not deny that TWTP explores these issues. In fact, she argues that they are an essential part of the program. Because race, gender, and class issues are intrinsic to minority experience, she believes that they must be indispensable elements of TWTP. For, how, she asks, can TWTP orient third world students to the university, unless it “frankly discusses” the issues of race, gender, and class those third world students will face in college.
Dean McLaurin also believes that she has succeeded in making TWTP more inclusive. She agrees with President Simmons’ program of intellectual diversity. That is why TWTP has invited “non-third world students” the past two years. In fact, she notes that every member of the freshman class this year had the option to attend TWTP by filling out an online application.
While Dean McLaurin is pleased with TWTP’s growing inclusiveness, she agrees that more could be done to attract non-third world students to the program. According to Dean McLaurin, TWC lacked the necessary “financing” to recruit anyone other than third world students to attend TWTP this year. So, while Minority Peer Counselors contacted and, in Dean McLaurin words, “strongly encouraged” third world students to attend TWTP, no recruitment efforts were made to attract white students. The result, according to Dean McLaurin, was that very few white students attended TWTP this year.
Though this lack of inclusion was not desired, it nonetheless resulted. And because it did, some ask whether TWTP should be reformed. Is a program that functionally divides students by third world status consistent with an ethos of intellectual inclusion? If not, should white students be encouraged to attend that program on the same basis as third world students? If so, should that program broaden its intellectual focus and be made optional for all students? Or, is TWTP an invaluable program that works and deserves our support?
Because issues of race and ethnicity are as nuanced as they are problematic, it is not surprising that there are widely divergent views on TWTP. However in that diversity, there can nevertheless be a unity born of a shared vision of Brown as a place of intellectual community, not fractionalized self-interest. This does not mean that we should compromise who and what we are to a collective ideal. However, it does mean that we can exercise our freedom to be individuals within an intellectual community at Brown that is united by our tolerance and enlivened by our diversity.
Is this an illusion of a freshman still new to the sturm und drang of college life? Perhaps, but I also know that these are sentiments that Madison, Alcaeus, and certainly President Simmons share. How can I know? The answer is written on the wall of the John Carter Library.
