ABSTRACT
The University of Maryland, College Park campus seemingly represents a microcosm of the country’s different racial, ethnic, political, and religious identities. Campus members take pride in this structurally diverse population, which is a reason many students choose to attend. However, for many students hailing from largely homogeneous high schools and neighborhoods, the campus’ heterogeneity is a stunning change. Contact theory advocates that associating with outgroup members will reduce prejudicial thinking (Allport, 1954; Pettigrew & Tropp, 2006, 2008, 2011), but not all students are equally swayed to interact with and accept diverse others (Pascarella et al., 1996). We employed a distinctive set of art-focused diversity-training activities with an incoming freshman cohort in Fall 2015 to moderate their sudden proximity with outgroup members. However, we did not anticipate their undergraduate experience would include a series of racially and religiously motivated hate crimes and bias incidents. These and other local, national, and international incidents of identity-based violence and discrimination defined this cohort’s undergraduate career. Our results showed short-term positive effects for our activities and indicate the need for ongoing diversity-training efforts, as well as demonstrable support for minority groups from across all levels of the campus population, from students to administrators.
