<p>Finally, I would like to bring the discussion back to where it started–and that is the experience of diversity in college. Claremarie wisely and accurately notes that many students have “positive experiences” at there respective colleges, and Notre Dame students are some of the happiest students of any achool around. But please, do not pretend to characterize the “Notre Dame experience” as something that it clearly is not–it is not fair to prospective students to characterize the experience as “diverse” in the ways we are talking about it here. You are simply kidding them and kidding yourselves. The academics at Notre Dame are solid and broad, students work hard and play hard, and they do very well in job/graduate school placement; however, there is a lack of intellectual engagement at ND relative to its peer schools and the academic experience is almost entirely “ivory tower” with few real-life correlates as part of the standard educational experience (e.g. courses taught by actual practitioners and not just academics, use of real life resources like museums, medical centers, financial institutions, government entities to enhance the educational experience). The social life at ND is active and engaging–intramurals, intercollegiate athletics, clubs, school spirit, and beer–and that is enough (plenty) for most of the ND students–but what if you want to see a world-class symphony performance or go to an Ethiopian restaurant for dinner–oh right, Chicago is right around the corner. The ND students may look different on the outside (finally the school figured out the importance of that one–it was probably the last national university to do so), might have different home addresses, and might prefer a different type of beer, but otherwise, their lives during their undergraduate years are REMARKABLY SIMILAR–and, most people at ND identify that as the school’s greatest weakness as well as its greatest strength. Oh yes, and its 80-90% Catholic–conservative Catholic. Just ask the gay students and faculty at Notre Dame how diverse (or friendly) the school is…</p>
<p>As Notre Dame has achieved greater academic prestige, many of the people affiliated with the school try to make it something or portray it as something which it is not, all in an effort to “compete” with its newly-acquired peers–other schools, including Georgetown, Duke, etc. have similarly gone through such misguided growing pains in the past. Characterizing the experience at ND as “diverse” is misleading, unless you are commenting on the diversity of success/failure of the football team in the last decades.</p>