Earlier today, I attended a diversity workshop put on by the Student Life Multicultural Center for the STEM EE Scholars program here at Ohio State. I honestly was not sure what to expect from this workshop. Being a white, heterosexual male, the discrimination that is often talked about during these workshops rarely apply directly to me. They do, unfortunately, often apply to my Hispanic younger sister back home in Tennessee. I felt the workshop was overall very productive and I learned quite a lot. I was able to identify my identity of being an out of state student as something that I think about often and sometimes makes me feel out of place. I was able to especially relate to the presenter when she gave the example of people mentioning specific towns assuming you know the entire state of Ohio. I admit I had to laugh at that example. I also learned about categories of privilege that I did not realize existed such as being fertile vs infertile. I felt that her explanation of what “privilege” meant and that it was not meant to be used in a punitive way. The presenter also explained that people who are “privileged” should not feel guilty about their “privileges” and should instead use their “privilege” to help others who are less “privileged”. Unfortunately, the presenter was not able to tell me the difference between Latinx and Hispanic for my sister, so I will likely have to do further research. Being at Ohio State, with a very diverse student population, means that diversity and inclusion affects all of us on a daily basis. People are coming from very different backgrounds and we all have to be conscious of that when interacting and working with one another. To call back to my previous example, it would be unfair of someone to assume that I had grown up in and knew enough about Ohio to talk about things in Ohio as a native just as it would be unfair for me to do the same about Tennessee. In addition, Ohio State has a significant international population meaning that we all need to be conscious of their potential cultural differences and language barriers when interacting with them. This is very different from back home where I lived in an upper middle class suburb of Nashville that was well-educated and mostly white with the exception of a significant East Asian and Indian population in my area. I think it is important for university, especially a university of large and prolific as Ohio State, to have a great focus on diversity because the university attracts a very large and diverse student population. With there being so many people, it can feel easy for one to be lost, especially when they are different from the other people they are immediately surrounded by. I know I felt lost being a non-Ohioan in my first few weeks, so I can only imagine what it is like for someone who is part of a more obvious minoritized group (i.e. LGBTQ+, international, first-generation, etc.). Overall, however, I think Ohio State does a fantastic job of making sure that everyone in its diverse population feels included.
