Many colleges have orientation programs for minority students. Illinois Wesleyan University has one, too. But it offers something most colleges don’t: an orientation for white students.
The voluntary three-day program, called Engaging Diversity, is designed to teach first-year white students about issues of racial inequality and white privilege and to encourage them to talk freely about discrimination and diversity.
Meghan Burke, an assistant professor of sociology at the university, whose 2,000 students are more than 70 percent white, helped design the program with a former colleague four years ago. “It’s important for us to know that diversity isn’t just about people of color,” she says.
The program, which takes place before the university’s general freshman orientation, coincides with pre-orientation programs for minority students and international students. Several activities are shared by all three groups, including dinners, social events, and a “privilege walk” aimed at showing students how some people grow up with more opportunities than others. (For the walk, students line up, shoulder to shoulder, and take steps forward or backward in response to prompts like “Take a step forward if your home growing up had more than 100 books.”)
Most of the time, though, white students meet separately, usually in a classroom. They listen to lectures, have small-group discussions, watch a documentary, and at one point play a version of Monopoly that teaches them about racial privilege by establishing separate and unequal rules for different groups of players. They are also given homework assignments in which they are asked to answer questions like “As a white person, what can you do to engage diversity on this campus and promote social justice?”
Getting students to understand the concept of white privilege is something Ms. Burke spends a lot of time on. Some poor students may not feel privileged, and some rich male students may feel they are being blamed for everything. “We try to get them to understand that this is about how the structure of our society is put together and that it doesn’t have to do with their decisions or choices,” Ms. Burke says. The only criticisms she has heard from people outside the program are from those who mistakenly believe it is designed to celebrate white culture.
All students who self-identify as white are invited to participate in the program, and usually about 20 or 25 students out of a possible 350 white freshmen do so. One of those students was Ryan Winter, now a senior. He says he signed up mainly because he got to move in early and because the topic sounded interesting. He grew up in Wheaton, Ill., which he describes as a secluded, mostly white suburb “where everyone is Christian.”
Besides making him more aware of issues of race and privilege, the program encouraged him throughout his college years to meet students who might seem different, Mr. Winter says. “I learned that people are not as judgmental as you might think or worry about,” he says. He has returned to the pre-orientation program each fall to serve as a mentor, helping to facilitate discussions.
Rachel Wimberly, a junior, also went through the program, although her background is much different than Mr. Winter’s. She is from Detroit and was one of the few white students in her high school. Issues of race had always interested her. The orientation program made such an impression on her that she created a student group this year that gets together each week to talk about race and privilege. If it hadn’t been for the Engaging Diversity program, says Ms. Wimberly, “I never even would have thought of starting something like this.”
Ms. Burke, the program’s co-founder, has made efforts since the start of the program to measure its effectiveness, including giving participants questionnaires before and right after the program to observe changes in their attitudes about race and their understanding of diversity and privilege. A sociology major is looking at how the beliefs and activities of seniors who went through the program as freshmen differ from those who did not attend.
Ms. Burke sees anecdotal evidence of the program’s effect. “A lot of former participants become RA’s or get involved in student organizations and really take the changed insights they have and get it out there into the community,” she says.
“That, of course, is our goal.”
