November 23, 2003 A week at the University of Arizona has already gone by; and yet, you might be like me who, after a year, still does not know that that big red brick building to the right is supposed to look like a cat or that there is even a police station somewhere on campus. Like me, you could still be struggling with how to pronounce Harshbarger or Kuiper; and it definitely does not help that the people at the Mexican American Studies and Research Center think it is time to change the Econ building's name to the Cesar E. Chavez building.
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But what is the purpose of renaming a building? Is it to confuse the poor befuddled freshmen, transfer students, and other people like me? No, sorry to break up your giant conspiracy theory, but the change in names actually has a, supposedly, beneficial purpose of trying to encourage more Hispanic students to attend the University of Arizona as well as foster a sense of community among the Hispanic students on campus; the building's new name would give Hispanic students a place to be comfortable. And, last of all, the name change honors Cesar E. Chavez, a Hispanic social activist. However, renaming the Econ building does little to benefit the Hispanic community and the UA campus and, in fact, actually harms the image of Hispanic and other students at the University; in fact, it portrays the rest of campus as intolerant and Hispanics as unable to adjust to the rigors of social life within a diverse community. First, the Hispanic community would be viewed as unable to cope on a campus that has a racially diverse student body and eventually in the United States. That a Hispanic student could not be comfortable unless in a building named after a Hispanic leader surrounded by their Hispanic peers and faculty members of the Mexican-American Studies and Research Center and Chicano/Hispano Student Affairs highlights a problem. By renaming the building to create a place for Hispanic students to be comfortable, we have created a situation where bad social relations between races are encouraged. At the University of Arizona, we have a student population composed of about 14% Hispanics; if Hispanic students cannot get along in an artificially created environment that the University generates, it appears that these students cannot get along in the real world, which not only includes Arizona and the immediate Tucson area but also the rest of United States, in which only 12.5% of the population is Hispanic. What the University is doing by allowing the Econ building's name to be change is coddling a bad ideology and racial relations. What happens when these people move to another state with a smaller Hispanic population? Well, we have a maladjusted graduate. This in itself creates a problem for the University's reputation; if it is known to produce students who cannot adjust to the real world, the likelihood that that university would be recommended by high school councilors and others would drop. In addition, the name change would create the image of a racist campus at the University of Arizona. If a student must go somewhere designated on campus as being tolerant to their race, the rest of the country would assume that that student could not be comfortable anywhere else at the University of Arizona. This assumption, in turn, would help foster the idea that the other students and faculty on campus are intolerant to Hispanics, thus promoting distrust among Hispanics of other students and faculty dissimilar to themselves as well as an overall negative image of the UA campus. And although President Likins was not the one to initiate the Econ building's new life under a different name, the Chavez building fits well into Likins' goal to diversify and make the University of Arizona into a "Hispanic serving institution" by increasing the percentage of Hispanic students. His plans include increasing the Hispanic enrollment rate from the current level of 14% to the statewide percentage of 25%; this drastic increase in Hispanic enrollment would make the University of Arizona more eligible for federal funding. Since last year, students at the UA have seen an increase in their tuition; some students have been finding it difficult to get into classes their major requires. The faculty has seen budget cuts all across the board, and departments have been consolidated. It appears that Likins and the administration are using the Hispanic students at the University of Arizona as merely a trump card to receive more, free federal funding. Doesn't it make a person feel good when they are being used? Another reason purported for the increase rise in Hispanic enrollment was diversity of opinion and ideas, but this diversity cannot be accomplished by merely racial quotas. For instance, Mexican-Americans, the race that most Hispanic students coming to the UA will claim to be, tend to be far more liberal than their other Hispanic counterparts and even the general population within the state of Arizona. (If you have not noticed, last year's elections yielded two liberal representatives, Grijalva being one of them, from districts that tend to be predominately more Hispanic than the other districts in the state of Arizona.) We also need to consider that the higher you get in the education system, the more liberal your peers and faculty will tend to be. So with these facts in mind, let us consider diversifying the UA campus in regards to ideas: If, in fact, Mexican-Americas are one of the most liberal Hispanic voting blocks and universities tend to be more liberal than the rest of the United States, should not President Likins try to recruit some conservatives? But as we have seen, diversity of thoughts is not the real goal of our administration; if it were, we would be recruiting more males and more conservatives. Instead, what we have done by diversifying the campus according to race and not ideologies, we have made race a factor, once again. People are no longer people; rather, they are Latinos, African-Americans, and Caucasian, which allows factions to develop among the student body. Rather than benefiting the University of Arizona, diversifying the campus through renaming buildings and trying to increase enrollment of Hispanics hurts not only the rest of the student body but also the Hispanic students. Mistrust, factions, and negative opinions of the University and Hispanics are just some of the consequences of diversifying. Nevertheless, in the spirit of renaming, of my increased hunger and confused state of mind, and of increased funding, I declare that the Nugent and Harshbarger buildings be renamed to the McNugget and McHashbrown buildings, respectively. |