Diversity. It’s a loaded word, and one that I’ve been asked to write about in the coming weeks. I was curious why others believed I was qualified for the role. One person suggested I am somehow in touch with “that community” on campus. Since then, I’ve been contemplating what “that community” means. I understand diversity to exist in many forms, characterized by multiple differences within our society and our world. Still, my roommates and I agreed “that community” likely meant that I was known to have many African-American friends, including the one who recommended me for this column.

Already this characterization, if we assume it to be true, is problematic. I am a white woman from Wisconsin. I have no pretensions about understanding the “black experience.” I do, however, believe that I made a decision as a child not to let the color of my skin prevent me from crossing socially constructed boundaries. I don’t like to be told what is acceptable behavior for a white, blond American female. Each adjective comes with its own social constructs; I do my best to avoid adhering to these on principle. I imagine my tendency to disregard society’s stereotypes probably factored into my friend’s recommendation. I’m not comfortable fitting into any one category, and my social life reflects that.

To say I’m in touch with “that” community could mean any number of groups in my life. I tend to float between different groups of friends. For years I would plan at least two different birthday parties for myself, one for each group of friends. At 16, I decided that was silly and invited everyone to the same party; they split into factions, forcing me to travel between the self-segregated groups. Every day at Ithaca feels like that birthday party.

Ithaca claims to be a “diverse community” but in practice appears to have become a contradiction in terms. Across campus it is possible to view self-segregation: by school, by major, by race, by ethnicity — the list goes on. So what would the ideal “diverse” community look like? Each of us views diversity from a different lens. For those raised in multi-ethnic communities, Ithaca is a fairly homogenous sea of whiteness. For others, Ithaca may appear to be diverse. But we still need to question whether having different people coexist qualifies us as “diverse.” If that is the goal, then we may as well stop now. But we each have our own ideas of what constitutes diversity and what problems might be associated with the label. What questions should we be asking when it comes to diversity on our campus, and more generally in the world at large? We need a real dialogue, and it may as well start here.