Jose Acuna ’20
Cooper Parson ’20
THE ROUNDUP
Brophy gives its students many opportunities to branch out and expand their horizons of other cultures.
From Kino Border Initiative to the Peru Exchange, these opportunities give us the chance to see the world from a different view.
But do they really make us more diverse as a community? We go out and immerse ourselves into a world different than our own, but is it doing anything to impact who we go out and interact with on a daily basis?
We still come back to school and go back to people who are just like ourselves.
This primal instinct to surround ourselves with people who are similar to us, is called homophily.
“… it’s comfortable for people to be around people like themselves,” Sociology teacher Mr. Ryan Hubbell said.
Mr Hubble said that one of the hallmarks of Jesuit education is to surround ourselves with as many types of different as possible.
While this is true, does it really do anything to change us in the long run? Of course we go out and have these “life changing” experiences, but when we come back home what will end up happening?
Some might say homophily isn’t really an awful thing, and that we should be able to spend time with whoever we want.
However, this is only true to some extent. We shouldn’t just seclude ourselves with a certain group of people.
Assistant Principal for Ministry, Mr. Paul Fisko talked about immersion trips and their impact on students. “Not all of the immersion trips have the same impact on the people who go on it,” said Mr. Fisko.
“I do believe that if you go on, for example, the Havasupai trip or the Peru trip, the impacts will be similar.”
Ideally, immersion trips help form new friendships with other Brophy students and the people who we encounter on these trips.
Immersion trips don’t really make us more diverse. While they do help to make us more aware of how people are living in impoverished places, they don’t really drive us to get away from these primal feelings to stay within our own bubble.
It is comforting to surround ourselves with people who we’ve known for our entire lives.
We are able to interact with different people but that doesn’t mean we come back a different person.
We should all try to branch out. Rather than continue to remain within your “group” go out and put yourself around new people.
