Diversity was always just assumed in my hometown and my high school. I miss it. I do not want to go back to heavily structured days or to copious amounts of work. I do not miss having to go to class every day and I certainly do not miss having to take a bus at 6 a.m. every morning, but I miss when diversity was less of a marked check box on a demographic quota and more of a way of life. I miss walking down the streets of Englewood and seeing a Colombian restaurant next to a Sushi restaurant next to a French café.

Going to George Washington and now in my second year, I feel this lack of diversity within everything I do. My average-sized high school in New Jersey gives this large, heavily funded institution more than a fair fight when it comes to diversity.

On campus, there are small cultural groups that maintain themselves internally and often are not known by the collective. There are separate student associations for each group, but once placed against the majority, their voices are lost. When asking a random white person on the street about our demographics, him naming the basketball team as a source of diversity simply is not good enough and just plain embarrassing.

George Washington University is in the heart of what once was rightfully the “Chocolate City.” Looking campus-wide, the student body is simply white washed and representative of the upper to higher classes. In fact, 60.6% of the student body is white and 62.9% of the faculty is white. That means that in each classroom there is a high probability that there will be one or less minority student represented. This means that there will be a lack of diverse ideas and experiences as well. Ultimately, there will be a nonexistence of marginalized groups’ voices.

College is supposed to be about expansion of knowledge and cultural understanding, how am I supposed to learn about this experience when my white professor only talks to my white classmates about the experience of white people? I am not pointing fingers at professors or other students. They probably thought there would be more diversity here too. Yes, we all got the pamphlet with the token picture of “diversity.”

I am tired of minority groups being forgotten and I cannot imagine how utterly exhausting it is for minority groups to have to work and live on a campus where they continue to feel like the odd one out.