Taxpayer-funded segregation might sound like a thing of the past, but at one public university in Las Vegas, division based on race, gender, and sexual orientation is alive and well, even though it’s voluntary this time.
The University of Nevada, Las Vegas currently offers separate residence centers for African American, female, and LGBT students, according to a report by the College Fix.
The African American-only residence on campus is named Howell Town, after John Howell, who was the first African American to own land in Clark County, Nevada. “It became clear that there was both a desire and a need for dedicated spaces to explore identity in meaningful ways,” Orlando White, the campus’s assistant director of residential life, said in a public statement.
“Howell Town offers strength through celebrating and exploring diversity rather than just having diversity or the presence of difference,” he added. “These resources and the connection between them are critical components to student success.”
The university indicated that in its first semester, Howell Town “attracted 30 students, mostly upper-class and transfer students.”
Additionally, LGBT students have the opportunity to apply for residence at Stonewall Studies. Unlike more traditional dorms, Stonewall hall allows men and women to live together on the same floor without having to sign a formal agreement for “gender-inclusive” living.
The university also provides female-only housing in the Tonopah housing community, “available to any student who chooses to live in a women-only living environment.” Although it is unclear whether or not transgender people are permitted to live in the dorm, the university says it will “make room assignments based on how the student identifies his/her gender at the time of application,” according to its housing and residential life policies.
These developments at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas are far from the only instance of a new trend on American college campuses which some researchers call “neo-segregation.”
As of this year, 218 universities now offer separate graduation ceremonies for LGBT students, according to a list compiled by the left-wing LGBT rights organization Human Rights Campaign. Similarly, a new report released this year by the National Association of Scholars identified 76 universities which offer African American-only graduation ceremonies. Both reports span dozens of states and include many elite institutions.
“Neo-segregation inculcates in young people the readiness to cling to a victim identity at the expense of becoming a positive member of the larger community,” the report concluded. “No doubt a large portion of the racial grievance politics we see in society at large these days is the carefully nurtured product of campus neo-segregation.”
Troy Worden is a contributor to Red Alert Politics.
