Convivio: Tolerance, Diversity, and Campus Identity During the Trump Era

Abstract

In May 2017, twenty “student-artists” at Mary Baldwin University collaborated to create a mural about our institution and our very diverse student community. As a three week May Term course, the mural project continued a difficult conversation about diversity and inclusion on campus that occurred in the aftermath of Donald Trump’s election as president of the United States. The purpose of this article is to discuss how ethnographic methods were used to develop mural themes, as well as to discuss the ways that the mural itself, and the process of its creation, reveal student anxieties about and responses to the policies and rhetoric of the Trump administration. Despite the very real threats to their own safety and that of their family and friends, student-artists challenged the inherent insecurity caused by administration policies through their insistence on inclusion, tolerance, and co-existence.

Diversity, Difference, and Safety: Adapting Service-Learning for Diverse Students

“…While barriers between "town and gown" are not new to Mary Baldwin University or higher education more broadly, the focus group data suggests that in our situation concerns about racial prejudice and other forms of intolerance are signifcant factors limiting student involvement in the community. These concerns correlate with those expressed in other projects at Mary Baldwin University (Wightman 2019) and in anecdotal accounts in classrooms and other campus spaces. The program study, however, was fairly small and should be considered as a pilot project that initiated important and ongoing conversations and interventions on campus.…”