Make Your Own Experience

Ronetta L. Fagan '94 says she came to Harvard thinking the college was "a very diverse place." What she found, she says, is that "people really still are ignorant of one another."

Fagan is from a suburb of Dallas, Tex. Her community was mixed, but "more white than anything," she says. She went to a private girls' school--which she calls "a sheltered atmosphere"--for eight years. She was one of two Blacks in a graduating class of 76.

Her first-year rooming group included a white Catholic from Wisconsin and two white Protestants from the East Coast. She described living with them as a "learning experience."

This year, Fagan lives with one other Black Texan, a Chinese-American from a Washington, D.C. suburb and a Canadian Jew. And she's made a "learning experience" out of that, too.

When asked about the benefits of living in a diverse rooming group, Fagan talks about eating at Hillel with one roommate on Jewish holidays and talking to the other about her relatives back in China. She also says she talks, at times, to her Black roommate about the Black Students Association (BSA) and the Black fraternities and sororities on campus.

Fagan says the situation at Harvard has its pros and cons. One negative aspect of being Black at Harvard, she says, is "you get sort of pigeonholed at times."

"A lot of times I don't necessarily want to be looked at as a Black person," she says.

Despite such drawbacks, the Harvard campus, Fagan says, is "better than America as a whole," when it comes to race relations. "Better" doesn't mean perfect, though.

"We certainly don't have the secret to success," she says.

Whose job is it to find the paths to success?

"I think that the students should make initiatives...but that the University should be open to them," Fagan says.

The bottom line, she says, is "you make your own experience."