Ethnic clubs still discourage SFU’s sense of unity

Back in 2008, when I was Peak Opinions Editor, I wrote a popular article entitled “Enough with the ethnic clubs.” It denounced the still-common phenomenon of campus clubs and organizations that explicitly desire a narrow and particular ethnic membership. The Korean Students’ Society for whatever — that sort of thing.

It wasn’t really controversial. Aside from a few furious emails from the usual sorts, feedback from students of all backgrounds was overwhelmingly positive. Strangers-stopping-me-in-the-hallways positive. There was appreciation for stating bluntly something everyone already knew.

When SFU was founded, Canada’s entire visible minority population was around 300,000 — fewer than the number of ethnic Chinese who now live in Vancouver alone. Government policy over the last half century has brought incredible waves of immigration to this country, mostly from what anthropologist-types would call the “global south,” and the result has been a transformation of Canadian society in a way SFU’s first generation of grads could have barely anticipated when they crossed the stage in 1967.

Today SFU has become a vivid case study in the challenges brought by a nation that has pursued such rapid diversification.

Some anecdotes are encouraging — even inspiring. In the last decade, five visible minorities have served as president of the SFSS — more than in the previous 40 years combined. I was once in charge of SFSS elections, and in my 2007 report I recorded “no visible minorities were elected” to the board of directors. Today the majority of its members have names like Binesh, Sharma, and Chen.

Yet outside certain bubbles, many SFU students experience a campus that has not adapted to changing demographic realities with impressiveness or comfort. Any casual tour reveals informal segregation of the student body — in study groups, in cafeteria seating, in friendship cliques — remains the norm, with language and race serving as barriers of division and alienation. This is why the brazen shamelessness of ethnic clubs rub so many the wrong way: they celebrate exclusion and isolation on a campus that’s already has enough trouble with that.

The blame should be widely spread. Institutions of campus culture promoting a united student identity and purpose have either eroded with time, or merely become more conspicuous for never existing.

English, supposedly SFU’s official language of communication, seems to have been undermined by relaxed fluency standards for new students in the service of swelling enrollment — particularly among deep-pocketed foreigners.

Sports remain, as they have always been at SFU, the passion of a dedicated few. Perhaps a new stadium will change this, but a mountain-top university with few genuine townies will probably never have an American-style culture of Friday night lights.

Satellite campuses have encouraged geographic scattering of the student body, and reinforce the idea that SFU is less a place than a brand.

Respect for campus history and heritage is often sacrificed for political correctness. Crosses were erased from the university crest, artwork depicting the adventures of Simon Fraser have been taken down for being excessively ‘colonialist.’ New logos and slogans have been empty and corporate.

Unifying mediums of campus communication, such as this newspaper — are easily ignored in the online age.

Absent of the allure of traditional pillars of campus culture, temptation is strong for students to retreat into identities that do offer firmness or passion. Pride in race and nation will always deliver both.

In a diverse society containing ever-increasing of numbers first and second generation youth, the Canadian university can be a powerful institution to promote civic assimilation and a sense of common cause. Ethnic clubs remain a symptom of SFU’s failure to fulfill this important obligation to campus and country alike.