Last week I went to Nashville with the University Singers for the American Choral Directors Association district convention. We were one of about four or five college choral groups to perform, and that’s out of about ninety who submitted tapes.

One of the great things about the University Singers is that it’s such a diverse group. There are jews, christians, and muslims. If I tried to name off the top of my head how many nationalities and ethnicities are represented, I would certainly leave out several. My experience with this group has been the opposite of the experience represented with the ΠΚΑ incident, which only served as an example of institutional racism and ignorance.

At the convention we were able to watch a few of the other choral groups who performed. They were all white. They sang challenging songs, indeed, but there was very little variation as far as how they sang. Then we sang. We sang Spanish, Latin, Russian; we sang a couple of spirituals. Our repertoire required that we have a change in color from one song to the next. In other words, not only did we have to pay attention to how we shaped our vowels from one song to the next or whether we used straight tone or vibrato, but we had to know what we were singing (the translation) and the historical and cultural background to have a true understanding of how we should portray the music.

My experience with the University Singers only makes me wonder how many other examples of diversity can be found around the campus. I bet there are dozens, if not hundreds. What gets media attention, though, isn’t what happened in Nashville. Nor is it any other great example of diversity. It’s what happens at some frat party.