“The Boston College student body is painfully homogenous,” I said to the woman who sat beside me. We were waiting for a panel discussion on “Workplace Diversity” to begin, and found common ground on the topic of education. She works for a nonprofit that aids underprivileged students in preparing for the demands of a university, and I attend a school that is nearly void of the types of students her organization helps.
Our conversation was brought to a hush as the panel speakers filed onto stage—three women who build teams for organizations in technology, finance, and government. The panel, which was hosted by Design Exchange Boston in the Seaport District, placed an emphasis on putting “people first” when recruiting talent.
Chief resilience officer for the City of Boston, Dr. S. Atyia Martin, sat on the panel and spoke of her current project— building a team that works to make social and economic equality in Boston a sustainable reality. She admitted the danger of simply filling “token representations” within an organization, which is often a product of attempting to solve underrepresentation from a statistical standpoint (i.e. 30 percent of our employees are female: we need to hire more women). Instead, Martin believes the recruitment process should be driven by asking, “Who are we serving?” By enlisting advocates directly from marginalized groups, Martin said, organizations avoid the trap of merely appeasing the statistics, and will ultimately be more successful in achieving solutions.
As I scribbled down Martin’s words about the inextricable link between a team and its mission, I remarked on the irony of BC’s Jesuit mission to produce “men and women for others.” At its most basic interpretation, “men and women for others” is good and simple. However, its simplicity spawns ambiguity. Who exactly are we “men and women” of BC? And who are the “others” for whom we exist?
Jesuits working at Boston College in the winter and spring of 1994 made an attempt to spur conversation surrounding these questions. In a paper entitled, Jesuits and Boston College: BC’s Mission, Jesuits’ Mission, the Jesuits analyze how the seemingly confounding variables of religion and modernity confuse the identity of BC. They acknowledge that universities can play an integral role in reversing the dehumanizing struggles experienced by the oppressed (presumably, the “others”). Yet they also understand the tendencies of universities to “tailor their programs to market demands, compete for scarce resources from government and private donors, and woo students with consumer amenities.” The Jesuits do not provide answers to the seeming paradox of humanity and capitalism, a disaccord that continues to fork the vision of BC today. However, they remain confident that harmony is possible—that “a university can express a profound humanism, constituted by the desire to understand the world and the direction of our lives … to achieve justice.”
Twenty-one years after the paper was published, BC has only regressed in solving this inconsistency between humanity and capitalism. From where I stand in 2015, BC’s identity crisis as a money-hungry Catholic university manifests itself most evidently in the socioeconomic homogeneity of its student body. We do not reflect an understanding of the world. Rather, we reflect an understanding of the hierarchy of boarding schools in the Northeast United States. We understand the connotations of our hometown zipcodes. We understand the world we occupy: the world of the privileged white.
To cater to the desires of our status-at tuned administration and cushion-accustomed undergraduates, the University has placed an insularity-perpetuating $186,680 price tag on BC’s four-year undergraduate Jesuit education. Complemented by scholarships, the main source of tuition subsidization is through financial aid. However, the average financial aid package subsidizes a four-year undergraduate education by less than 20 percent (and the average scholarship even less so)—an amount that is not enough to support a truly global and cross-cultural student body. These figures makes one wonder where exactly the $425 million annual gross tuition revenue and the vaguely allocated alumni donations are actually going (beyond, of course, the religious upkeep of grounds).
At some point, BC’s administration will get back to its Jesuit roots. It will realize that educational efficacy is not achieved by tightening acceptance rates, nor climbing the ranks of US News & World Report, nor buying up more land. Rather, it is achieved by taking financial risks and making creative efforts to broaden the talent pool from which BC recruits. This is more than catering to minorities. It is about composing a student body that reflects the groups of people we, the men and women of BC, are supposedly serving. If BC wants to truly improve, it needs to welcome students who represent the innumerable facets of diversity that can advocate for all brackets, classes, races, and corners of the world.
This is not to say that BC’s current approach is completely ineffective—as a white female from an affluent suburb outside Rochester, N.Y., I find BC’s volunteer programs in Boston and abroad integral in awakening students to both their own privilege and the world’s plight. Yet, in light of the resources at BC’s disposal, notably the recent $1.5 billion fundraised by the Light the World campaign, it seems that the approach of mere contact to the gritty reality of the world is cutting corners. Imagine the richness of each student’s world perspective if BC fostered an inclusive culture, where the privileged and disenfranchised sat alongside one another in classrooms, receiving a high-level education, feeling comfortable contributing personal anecdotes, and building solutions together. BC has the sufficient monetary and human capital to make this a reality. Yet, in the years that I have attended the University, BC has seemingly made no advances to diversify its socioeconomically homogeneous student body.
The administration can continue to revel at the satisfactory chunk of the pie chart they’ve allotted to AHANA students. They can fall asleep at night under the impression that the access they provide to volunteer programs is enough to move humanity forward. But until BC’s leaders engage in the dialogue that the Jesuits encouraged more than two decades ago—until we, as a University, address Dr. Martin’s question of, “Who are we serving?” and subsequently make efforts to reflect these people in the composition of our student body—we shan’t be citing the blasphemy that a BC Jesuit education produces “men and women for others.” Perhaps “white and privileged for others” would be more honest.
Featured Image by Francisco Ruela / Heights Graphic