<p>From the article, it sounds like some aspects of this program were not very well thought out and/or implemented, to say the least.</p>
<p>See, stuff like this...there are good ways to do diversity issues awareness (or anything else), and bad ways. This just reeks of bad ways, and reinforces the unfortunate negative associations that many people have with the word "diversity".</p>
<p>"When University of Delaware freshmen showed up at their dorms this semester, their orientation included an exercise aimed at bridging cultural divides.</p>
<p>But the program backfired after they were told to write down stereotypes of different ethnic and religious groups and publicly give their views on issues such as gay marriage and affirmative action.</p>
<p>"You have girls giving you hard looks because they're Jewish, and you just wrote something offensive, like they're cheap, even though you don't believe it," said Grace Banks, 18, of Smyrna. "It caused a lot of separations. . . . The whole situation was really uncomfortable."</p>
<p>Delaware's diversity training program is under scrutiny after students complained that they were pressed to adopt university-approved views on race and other sensitive topics, participate in squirm-inducing exercises, and rated on their responses to questions about their sexual and cultural beliefs."</p>
<p>It reminds me of what my high school world history teacher did: The first day of class, he had us match up a list of racial/ethnic groups to various stereotypes. It was a very thoughtless exercise because that's how most of the class, including me, started stereotyping people.</p>
<p>My son learned some stereotypes he was previously unaware of in ninth grade during a social studies simulation of the Palestinian-Israeli conflict. He learned the stereotypes, not from the teacher, but from a classmate who was on his team for the simulation project.</p>
<p>I had many stereotypes about the Palestinian-Israeli conflict, all skewed to the Israeli side, because of my Jewish heritage and upbringing. That is until I met a guy from Palestine in college with an utter hatred for Israel. I was instructed before I met him to not mention that I am Jewish. However, I refused to conceal this fact, because I am proud of who I am. I don't go out of the way to advertise my religion but I will never go out of my way to cover it up either. At first, the guy, named Yassin, treated me like I was pure evil. Eventually, we sat down and discussed the stereotypes we believed and the preconcieved notions we had. This really opened my eyes to things I would never had understood if I had only listened to the biased views given to me by my Rabbi and synagogue. Likewise, Yassin realized that Jews aren't inherently evil and hateful toward all Muslims. We began a Palestinian-Israsli Alliance club that is still active today. I know this is off topic from the original discussion, but is just in reference to the post above mine.</p>
<p>The program has been suspended. The Chronicle of Higher Education says: </p>
<p>
[quote]
The University of Delaware announced late Thursday that it had suspended its residence-life education program, days after a prominent free-speech group accused the institution of engaging in "systematic thought reform."</p>
<p>In a message to the university, Patrick T. Harker, Delaware's president, said administrators and faculty members would review the program. "There are questions about its practices that must be addressed," Mr. Harker said, "and there are reasons for concern that the actual purpose is not being fulfilled."
[/quote]
</p>
<p>My son is a freshman at UD and my husband and I are outraged. He attended all his mandatory meetings and was completely uncomfortable from the get go. All we knew was that he had to go to these meetings and he said they were ridiculous. Had we known what we know now we would have personally questioned the university. I have felt so comfortable with every aspect of the University until now. How many people knew about this program and simply went along with it? These kids were brainwashed into thinking that all white people are racist. Each freshman was instructed to meet with his or her RA and were questioned at length regarding their sexual identity and personal opinions. At these "interviews" the RA's would take notes and the kids were told these notes were to make sure that they had attended these sessions. Well, these notes were reported to the resident life staff so that they could see if the garbage they were spewing was getting through to these kids!!!</p>