Multicultural Center Would Improve College

I was most disturbed by the argument that was presented by a College administrator at last Wednesday's debate about the merits of opening a multicultural center at Harvard. He questioned what role would be left for the Harvard Foundation if a multicultural center was established.

Apparently the College, in its never-ending quest to promote and uphold the diversity that it claims to hold near and dear to its heart, established the Foundation and is quite happy with its accomplishments. I myself, having worked with the Foundation, am very pleased with the work that it does. But I cannot imagine how a multicultural center would either overshadow or make obsolete the work the Foundation does.

After all, the Harvard Foundation's full name is the Harvard Foundation for Intercultural and Race Relations. All the views of students with whom I have spoken and most of the views that were expressed at the debate entailed cultural and ethnic groups sharing common space, thus promoting the main tenet of the Foundation.

I cannot imagine a multicultural center that did not have the Foundation at the forefront. Indeed, the Foundation contributes a great deal toward the central mission of a multicultural student center--the bringing together and sharing of diverse cultures and ethnicities--and as such the multicultural center and the Foundation are not counter to each other.

When the Administration asks, "What is the reality of this center; how do you envision it?" my answer is that the center will further the work already conducted, appreciated and applauded by the College as a whole, members of the Administration included. It will do so by facilitating in the coordination among the different cultural groups and providing a space that is devoted to the sharing of the vast diversity we have here.

If the College wants to be able to claim that this bastion of diversity provides a good educational experience, then it must be consistent in rising to the occasion by providing a more feasible and accessible way of sharing that diversity.

I wonder why the administration is so adamantly against creating a space for these purposes. Could it be that if they did, they would be solidifying their commitment to multiculturalism? The same administrator who wanted to know what would become of the Foundation if a multicultural center was created said that similar centers at other colleges were dark and on the periphery, hence imposing an uneasy feeling on those who visit. I also wonder what sort of feeling people get when they visit the dark cramped confines of the Foundation's office, located in the basement of Thayer.

I say, let the Foundation be elevated to its true higher status metaphorically and physically in a center of multiculturalism. --Mark A. Price '98,   Undergraduate Council   vice-president,   Black Men's Forum   vice-president