The Big O

As in 'Orientation'. I spent 6 hours yesterday at Laurier attending workshops and semiars and tours all about life next year at that wonderfully small and culturally devoid school. You can cross the entire campus in about 7 minutes. It takes the average university student 15 minutes to get from their dorm to class, it takes a Laurier student 2. Maybe 3 minutes. Max. Not that I'm complaing. Being the lazy-ass that I am, walking in short spurts is just the thing I need. Heck, I'm starting to complain that a 10 minute walk down the street to dinner at a restaurant is a pain. It's really not that bad; the size of Laurier is totally going to turn me into a whiny, sedentary gal. It's too late for me, but go! Save yourselves!

And my worst fears may be true after all; Waterloo IS a hole. A cultural hole, that is. After months of Jason's whining and complaining, I went to visit Waterloo myself and found that I actually enjoyed the town. It's like a scaled down version of Markham, and there's nothing wrong with that. All the things I need are within walking distance, and everything else is just a bus ride away. They have two restaurants that serve something other than white food, even if all the people who work there are white: Mongolian Grill and Curry in a Hurry. They even have rush hour and a ghetto. It's almost like a city! Not too bad at all. But yesterday while perusing a copy of The Cord Weekly, Laurier's student-run newspaper, I came across an article written by the Editor-in-Chief. Basically, the article said something like this: He (the writer, Wilbur McLean) is black and everyone around him is white. I looked around me and took in that there were about a handful of Chinese people and...that's it. Everywhere I looked there was blonde hair with highlights or brown hair with frosted tips. Tan skin that was meant to be pale.

"My professors are white. The staff is white. Students leaders are white. The school's administration is white. Want to take a course in African history? It's taught by an African, no doubt, but even he's white.
This is not to say that Laurier in general is a racist place since that is not the case at all. Overt racism is not something I've experienced and most people I've encountered don't appear to care whether I'm black, white or plaid.
However, there is a certain level of cultural ignorance that I find disheartening in an institution of higher learning.
Culturally, Laurier is like painting a white stripe on a squirrel and calling it a skunk. They're similar, but not quite the same."

I guess I can always just go down the street to the University of Waterloo to see my nerdy Asian - yellow and brown alike - brothers and sisters. But I'd have to be going through some serious withdrawal because that 10-15 minute walk can't be a good thing.

1:26 pm