Ravi Jain

For a Penn student, exposure to the idea of diversity starts early. It first shows up in the admissions catalogue: beautiful high-resolution photos of a “diverse” group of friends laughing on the Green; essay questions that ask what diversity of perspective a student will bring to campus; selecting one’s race on the Common Application.

Cliques exist all over Penn. It’s college, after all. But what makes group politics particularly difficult in ethnic minority communities is that minority students often rely on this group as a support system and as a place to feel welcomed, as Jessica mentioned.

As Penn students, we care a lot about careers. On-campus recruiting seems to be on everyone’s mind as lunch time conversations turn to resume formatting or company culture and dinner plans are cancelled to attend info sessions

The incredibly strong social media response in support of Ahmed Mohamed may seem like an indication of a changing tide in United States attitudes to Muslims, but the handcuffing itself is evident of an entrenched Islamophobia that will take many decades to heal.

At Penn, an often overlooked group of students are the younger population: most skipped a year or more in grade school, many started school early and some came from a different school system in which the coursework was more advanced. By interviewing these students, I was expecting to uncover issues related to mental health and dealing with high expectations.

It seems to me that there is no other community on earth as obsessed with the profession of medicine as the Indian American community.

Thinking about cultural appropriation as it affects my life brings up more questions than I expected. It is a complex topic because of the way it has been handled and regarded over time, and how it has impacted the lives of marginalized minority communities.

In the context of psychological research on identity development, the concept of gendered race is relatively new. Gender and race are also not the only aspects of identity that overlap. Issues of ethnicity, class and sexuality among others all significantly affect the way one acts and is perceived.

Going to a different school for one year hasn’t made me more mature or more experienced than my peers who spent their first year at Penn. From what I have experienced, colleges are more similar than they are different.

Emoji have recently appeared in the media due to their purported lack of diversity. A recent “Saturday Night Live” segment drew attention to the controversy when comedian Sasheer Zamata joked that she had to use the emoji for a new moon as none of the faces resembled her.