This past Sunday, Student Union collaborated with an assortment of student leaders for the first meeting of WU/FUSED, Washington University for Undergraduate Socio-Economic Diversity. We commend this effort and feel that such collaboration is a meaningful and necessary step toward cultivating an atmosphere that is respectful and understanding of the challenges posed and potential lessons wrought by socioeconomic diversity in our nation, city and the University.

While American universities—ours included—have long sought to attract diverse student bodies, this diversity is most often discussed in terms of race. Our University has made overtures to attract minority students and international students.

The normative goals of the University in creating diversity are twofold and are just as applicable—if not more so—to questions of socioeconomic class than they are to race. First, universities such as ours seek to provide opportunities for underprivileged members of society to receive an education that will lead them to social contributions and lucrative careers. Second, a push toward diversity seeks to cultivate a varied atmosphere within the school itself, enabling students to interact with those of different backgrounds.

The first goal is often discussed politically; the second is the one that matters to us as students. In a university setting, we learn from our peers just as we learn from our coursework. When the atmosphere we’re surrounded by is one of privilege, the lessons of social science that we read about in our classes hold little footing: We fail to comprehend the real repercussions of numbers about poverty and social stratification. Although we live in St. Louis—a city with immense socioeconomic geographical divisions—we often fail to understand the climate that surrounds the University because it differs so radically from the climate within it.

WU/FUSED has published a set of objectives that will attempt to tackle these concerns—objectives such as creating a program for RAs to promote consciousness of socioeconomic diversity, decrease textbook and dining costs, and add an additional admissions counselor to attract students from socioeconomically diverse backgrounds.

In order for these objectives to be successful, however, the student body needs to be aware that socioeconomic diversity is something we should value. Socioeconomic diversity is not as transparent—and cannot be as transparent—as racial diversity. We urge the student body to be conscious of and sensitive to the socioeconomic diversity that does exist on campus, and we encourage the administration to look to WU/FUSED as it moves to create policies that will make our University a more meaningful place to spend four years.