Students of all different races, backgrounds, ethnicities, and sexual orientations gathered at a luncheon event intended to encourage people to “mix up” their groups by sitting at different tables in the hopes of breaking down social barriers.

Wash. U. certainly isn’t unique in its high cost. Nearly 50 colleges and universities in the CampusGrotto ranking topped the $50,000 mark, and 43 more demand upwards of $40,000. Nationwide, average college tuition has increased at three times the rate of inflation for the last two decades. And strikingly, despite its high cost, only about 60 percent of Wash. U. students receive financial aid.

We hope that your years at Wash. U. are and will be a time of direct engagement with your surroundings, during which you can apply the critical thinking skills you learn in your classes to the world around you.

Student Union Treasury on Tuesday barely voted down legislation to create the Diversity Affairs Council, leaving the future of the proposal in doubt. The vote was 7-6-1. A two-thirds majority, or 10 votes, was needed to pass the legislation. Earlier that evening, Treasury had gone through the legislation’s articles and approved each one individually. When Treasury voted on the entire legislation, however, it did not pass.

In the midst of many issues affecting campus this year including the Mothers bar incident, Student Union Senate passed legislation to form a Diversity Affairs Council (DAC). Last week in Senate, the new legislation for the creation of the DAC passed with 22 votes in favor, two against and one abstention.

In response to an incident of Anti-Semitism that had occurred against my freshman year roommate and in response to four other events of hate, discrimination and prejudice that had occurred on our campus in the span of a few months, I founded the Student Diversity Initiative early in the fall of 2007. We soon went on to merge with Campus Week of Dialogue, a group that had been around on our campus for over a decade, and collectively we became known as Connect 4.

Our University has a diverse student body, but a criticism oft-levied at the makeup of this campus is that its different factions are prone to self-segregation. Though no amount of programming can fully solve this problem, structured collaboration between student groups is a good place to start.

Amid a relaxed atmosphere, Controversy N’ Coffee and WU/FUSED hosted a multicultural panel on the topic of socioeconomic diversity to a group of nearly forty students Thursday evening. The panel was composed of John Berg, Vice Chancellor of Admissions; Pam Hansen, Associate Vice Chancellor for Alumni & Development Programs; Harvey Fields, Assistant Director of Academic [...]

People at Washington University talk a lot about diversity and how to foster it.  I’ve noticed this throughout my stay here. It’s safe to say that most people honestly crave the benefits diversity brings. However, if we truly want this, we need to figure out the difference between shallower multi-culturalism with its overtones of exoticism [...]

Several studies about roommate over the summer fount that interracial roommates can reduce students’ prejudices and broaden their friend circles.