For four weeks now, The Mac Weekly has featured arguments regarding Macalester’s policy of attracting domestic minorities. Others are in a better position than myself to judge Macalester’s record of admitting and retaining domestic minority students. However, I believe that a large reason for the alienation felt by numerous members of minority groups—whether international, domestic minority or GLBT students—is the existence of the organizations whose fundamental roles were to give them a sense of belonging. I speak, of course, of cultural organizations.

These groups receive funding from Macalester, and do serve a number of constructive purposes, such as providing a forum for discussing common problems and sponsoring guest speakers on topics that they consider important. Although it may be natural for students with similar backgrounds or interests to form such groups, the existence of these organizations ensures the alienation of their members from the larger pool of students at the college.

The existence of cultural organizations also means that the communities that make up Macalester’s student body are unlikely to communicate among themselves. As a result, organizations remain ignorant of issues faced by other cultural organizations. A guest speaker on an issue dealing with the Sub-continent sponsored by MASECA, for example, does not necessarily attract a non-subcontinental audience. As a result of such trends, many international students are often oblivious to the issues faced by homosexual students, to pick another example.

Those most affected by the existence of these groups are students who fall out of favor with members of their community because of their reluctance to actively participate in their organization’s activities or perhaps by their association with another such organization. There appear to be unwritten rules that restrict a student’s membership to only one or two such cultural orgs. Hence, homosexual international students often feel ostracized by their international friends.

While I do not advocate all minorities ingratiating themselves into mainstream white, urban, middle-class, American suburbia, it is socially unhealthy to stifle possible channels for social interactions that breach ethnic, racial or cultural boundaries.

Macalester could do more to encourage student groups that can effectively take on the role for which the cultural organizations were originally founded, while not catering to the needs of a specific grouping of students based on religion, race, nationality or sexual preference. Not only would the overlapping of communities be encouraged but the cliquishness that plagues this campus will, hopefully, begin to be phased out.