Often times when someone is discussing the diversity of an institution or of a group of people, they look only at the color of someone’s skin or the background that they have. While I feel that it is important to have a number of different races, cultures, and lifestyles found in a group of people, I think that diversity means much more than that. Diversity can also be defined by different opinions, viewpoints, and arguments. It can be defined as different personalities, interests, and aspirations. When you take all of these definitions of diversity into account, The McConnell Center is one of the most diverse groups of young men and women I have ever seen.
If someone not accustomed to being in a seminar with a group of scholars were to sit in and listen, take part, and argue along side the scholars, he could tell you just how diverse this group is. The scholars have different views on religion. These views differ in their opinion of who God/god is, what he does and has done for us, and if there is an almighty at all. There are different views on politics, of course. These may be the most argued and diverse of all the views within the center. I know communists, fascists, libertarians, reductive sectarian communists, liberals, conservatives, and those that still have no idea what to think about politics.
Beyond the sphere of the typical arguments of religion and politics, we see arguments over what it is to be a human being, what the soul is, why we are living, where we are meant to go, and how we are to get there. These are questions that one does not typically come into contact with outside of the field of philosophy, but we see them every day in the center. Not only do we see them, but we hear a vast array of answers to these questions. The answers, although not always agreed upon, always make you think about the different viewpoints. Without these ideas being placed in front of you and argued, you may have never even thought of them and your world view would be much narrower than with the discussions and ideas brought out in McConnell Center discussions.
Overall, the center is a collection of roughly forty of the most intelligent young men and women in the commonwealth and in the country that are given an arena to be honest about their personal views on some of the most controversial topics as well as some topics that are rooted so deep in our existence that we often neglect them altogether as an escape from what may be brought up in those discussions, things that may truly scare us. These discussions are necessary however if we are to truly find what the meaning of life is. The center is much more than just a scholarship program.
Tyler Bosley