Bryn Mawr College

This Diversity Conversation was a follow-up from the last one, about political correctness. This time the discussion was more specifically focused on class and class issues at Bryn Mawr. One of the projects of Diversity Conversations is an attempt to make these dialogues more interactive, so that more people from more backgrounds are participating and everyone can give input.

In the context of Bryn Mawr’s campus, there certainly is a stigma to be PC; but how far does it go, how is it imposed, and how to we feel it?

Impact We had a few contributions of personal stories from students who have close ties to Haiti. A main concern when the news first broke was, of course, what the impact was; how many were affected? Who? Checking on friends and family became the first priority. But it can be hard to completely grasp the reality from so far away; the media can often create distance from the events, making them seem more unreal rather than helping us understand the seriousness of the ... Read more»

October 23, 2009 On tackling one of the most taboo topics on campus: mental health. What are some of the things/phrases that come to mind when we hear "mental health"? Crazy, alone, tears, stress, diagnoses, medication, silence, stigma, secrets, shame, helplessness, weak, therapy/services, support, family, empathy, courage, "What do you have to be unhappy about?", "Bitching and moaning", "It's all in your head." If mental health is something that everyone has, how do we distinguish mental health from mental illness? Mental health is a spectrum that mental illness falls on.  Mental health can be defined as the state of how the mind is, while mental ... Read more»

The conversation incorporated four dimensions of identity that seem salient in service work, as broken down by one of the facilitators: race, class, religion and gender and sexuality.