Claremont Independent's Ilan Wurman, Panel Discusses Racial Retreats, Minority Programs

Ilan Wurman CMC '10 and former editor of The Claremont Independent (and sometimes blogger on this site) did an excellent job tonight explaining why The Claremont Independent continues to oppose the existence of and school support for, racially exclusive clubs on campus. The discussion was facilitated by Lauren Ohata CMC '09 and concerned Ilan's article in the last issue of The Claremont Independent in which he cited research by Shana Levin, a CMC psychology professor that looked at how racial groups on campus impede racial harmony on campus. 

This isn't a familiar argument to anyone on campus. Indeed, the founder of the BSU (later became OBSA) made such an argument to me in The Claremont Independent. And I wrote as much in the pages of The Claremont Independent where I talked to students about how racial retreats end up promoting some bigotry against white students.

But apparently, this topic still warrants frank discussion and Ilan and the others did not disappoint tonight. I should have the video up later of his opening remarks. I did not film the rest.

This post will be a bit erratic, so please forgive me, but I'm going to be responding to several things that struck my eye. 

The ironic thing, of course, is that many of these groups concede with Ilan's observation that the diversity groups on campus accentuate differences and celebrate their culture. I would argue, however, that they go far beyond merely celebrating culture and that they both exclude some students and promote an oftentimes radical agenda.

Groups like OBSA and CLSA are inherently discriminatory. Ilan, after all, is the child of Israelis and yet he is never invited to APAM event. Technically, speaking, Ilan can lay greater claim to being "Asian" than many of the students who are third or fourth generation American of Asian descent. Indeed, given that I spent my formative years in Dorchester's Savin Hill, a.k.a. "Little Saigon," I can make the claim of growing up in a majority Asian neighborhood. My grandfather and (ultra far left) grandfather was an officer that helped resettle Vietnamese refugees at Fort Indiantown Gap and so he is often honored in our neighborhood for his contributions. In high school, I wrote several pieces for the Asian cultural magazine and I dated a few Asian girls. (While we're on the topic and contrary to popular perception, I don't have an Asian fetish. I just so happened to have a few Asian girlfriends. Of course, this kind of slander ought to be called out for what it is -- group racism and discomfort with interracial dating. Fortunately, even The Huffington Post agrees with me!)

Despite all this, neither Ilan, nor I are invited to APAM's retreats, despite both having ties to the Asian continent and to Asians generally. 

How can this be? Well, apparently it's because we aren't racially Asian and here is the part that really upset me. 

You see, whenever someone applies to Claremont McKenna and checks what their ethnicity is, that information is then turned over to these racially-based groups. For many students, before they are even on campus, they are contacted with an invitation to join one of these affinity groups. That's right, before some people even step foot on campus, they are encouraged to racially segregate themselves. 

And despite assurances that they stop trying to get students to join up, Sam Corcos, who co-writes this blog with me, still receives emails from CLSA. (He's part Cuban and a second semester sophomore.)

Now to be fair, some students don't join these groups, but that isn't because they aren't militant. Students are still trying to figure out who they are and are willing to grasp on to whatever it is that will help them understand it. Along comes the Asian/Hispanic/Black groups to tell them to join up before they have even met the rest of the campus.  I've seen how it works. Oftentimes they make claims like, "we're the only Asian group on campus, don't you want to celebrate your culture? Here have some candy!" Then before the semester is even really underway, they decide to have an exclusive, minority-only retreat. It leaves little doubt in incoming students' minds that APAM, OBSA, and CLSA can lay claim to being the monopoly or repository of all things, "Asian," "black," or "Latino/a." Many, many students have told me that they feel uncomfortable when approached by these groups in the beginning of the school year and that they feel pressured to join them. Maybe these groups should allow freshmen to form their own identities, to take classes, and to get to know their fellow students before they encourage them to join OBSA, CLSA, or APAM. 

Now, Professor Shana Levin is right to argue that those kinds of pressurized situations exist in frat houses and she is probably right. And yet here's the kicker, Claremont McKenna doesn't have frats and it sure isn't UCLA. Its white students are free to join or not join any group and so they mingle and make their own social interactions based upon what they enjoy, not what they look like. It was this point that Ilan made tonight. 

Ilan cited one of the authors of the study that shows that minority groups tend to harm academic performance as saying that colleges shouldn't encourage their formation. But currently, they do just that. They often subsidize them with lavish amounts of attention and funding. To be fair, many of the people that defend these subsidies argue that the clubs benefit students academically. But don't we already have the writing center for that? Ilan Wurman is a writing center tutor! Can students only learn from tutors that "look like them"? In that case, I had better avoid learning stats and macro from Indians....

There are no other clubs on campus where the colleges turn over student data for the purposes of recruitment. Can you imagine the outcry that would occur if the school gave out the zip code data to the Claremont Colleges Democrats or Republicans with the hopes that those students' political preferences could be data mined? 

Moreover, the mandatory racial sensitivity training that every R.A. must complete before becoming an R.A. is an indication of how these diversity groups don't just stay confined to dealing with student groups, but try to impose themselves on everyone else. As you'll see in the next issue of The Claremont Independent, this often means forcing a radical reinterpretation of school history in the promotion of an ideological agenda. 

Which, invariably brings me to my point, I believe that Claremont McKenna should refuse to provide that information to these affinity groups, at least for the first few months of school. As we do with alcohol during dry week, we should have a "cool off" period where we let students settle into campus before they are inundated with calls to join APAM, OBSA, and CLSA. Let OBSA, CLSA, and APAM contend with every group on campus during the activities fairs. Let them recruit all students so that when they go on their retreats, it won't just be the same color faces talking about issues that affect the "community."

One of the leaders of the Cabrones made the claim that he never sees The Claremont Independent at Cabrones parties and to be fair, at least to the members present, few CIers attend Cabrones' parties. I admitted that I just don't dance. But that isn't because we are "self-segregated," it is because we have little in common with groups that like to dance to rap music. It's because we aren't interested in attending them.

 The member of Cabrones was trying to use that example to say that we were self-segregating, but here he falls short. The Claremont Independent segregates itself based upon interest, not race. In fact, just to make a point of historical record, it was The Claremont Independent under Ilan Wurman that was the only Claremont publication that wrote a remembrance piece to honor Atul Vyas, their tragically deceased member. The efforts to portray us as some kind of exclusive, white male club are also without evidence. As I pointed out tonight, several of marriages that have formed from serving on The Claremont Independent staff have been interracial. We love participating in the life of this college and often attend events at Pitzer, Pomona, Scripps and CMC together and we've been known to go to left wing events. 

But the gentleman very much misunderstands the success of the Cabrones and if he thinks that The Claremont Independent or Ilan is arguing against the Cabrones, he sorely misunderstands Ilan's argument. The reason we celebrate the Cabrones is that they are an affinity based group that doesn't use coercion or the school to advance their interests. No one who wants to attend their parties is hounded down before they come here. The school does not give them any data whatsoever on the percentages of the population that like to drink and listen to rap music. Nor should it give data to OBSA, CLSA, and APAM. If it is true that students really want to join their clubs as they say, then they should have no problem recruiting them the old fashioned way: gauging student interest, not assuming that they'll be interested because of some box they check on their application.

Oh, and while we're at it, I'd love to be invited to any APAM, CLSA, or OBSA retreat or dinner. And as anyone knows after someone once called me "pudgy," I don't discriminate on the basis of food. I love it all.