With the release of the Class of 2018 Lawn room selections, it’s important to stop and consider how well these 47 selected individuals represent the Class of 2018 as a whole. While representation on the Lawn has made strides in racial and ethnic diversity in recent years, this year they have failed to provide intellectual diversity.
There are zero students from the Nursing school and the Architecture school selected to live on the Lawn. The Nursing school has 789 undergraduate students, making it 4.7 percent of the undergraduate population. A proportional representation on the Lawn would allow for two rooms to be allocated to nurses. With around 300 undergraduates, the Architecture school should have one room. These numbers, of course, do not need to be exact. However, at least one room should have been given to each school at the University to accurately represent its student body.
Every school and major has some tie to the Lawn that would allow them to benefit greatly from living there and every school should be represented so that they can bring their specific skill set and knowledge to the Lawn community. Without this, an important part of the University’s pool of knowledge is missing. The Nursing and Architecture schools both represent extremely unique sectors of the University community, which offer education and ways of thinking which differ from students in the College, Batten School, Engineering School, Curry School or Commerce School. The Lawn community will suffer by not having these schools represented while students of these schools will also suffer by not having the opportunity to experience living on the Lawn.
The aim of selecting who lives on the Lawn should be to represent all demographics of the University. Having at least some representation of each demographic of the University ensures that their viewpoints and knowledge are shared in the academic community of the Lawn. But also so they have the opportunity for CIOs related to their major to have formal or informal gatherings on the Lawn. The honor of living on the Lawn should also be experienced by students of all schools, even if you are not the student selected, you know that there are representatives of your school who was. Having a representative shows that people from your school are motivated, successful and involved enough to deserve a spot.
There is little contention about whether there should be diversity, and I am sure it was an aim of the selection committee, but they seem to have ignored academic diversity. The selection committee itself is required to have “representatives from each of the seven academic schools offering undergraduate degrees” because it is understood that inputs from each school will be different and make a valuable contribution to the committee- just as they would living on the lawn. Assuming there are qualified candidates of equal caliber in each of the schools, representation of each school should be a key demographic factor considered.
Academics are the foundation and original intent of the Academical Village. We are here to receive an education, so while it’s important that a variety of CIOs have representation, the first goal of creating a Lawn community should be to represent an inclusive variety of majors and academic specialties.
A Cavalier Daily article published Feb. 14 notes there is a failsafe to prevent this lack of diversity: “‘Last year, a calibration committee was put in place for selection of the Lawn residents for the 2016-17 academic year. This committee was created in order to ensure that the Lawn accurately represented University demographics. If the calibration committee finds that Lawn room selections are not sufficiently representative of the community, recourse can be taken to modify that. However, the committee has yet to be used, and no calibration was performed on selections this year,’ University Dean of Students Allen Groves said in an email to The Cavalier Daily Monday.”
The calibration committee, if used, could have ensured diversity among all genders, races, types of involvement and especially schools at the University. Not even calling upon the committee shows a lack of awareness and concern for applicants coming from these two excluded schools.
Brittany Hacker is a fourth-year College student.
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