The cafeteria is the scene of a typical gathering of high school students. Noise. Body language. Eruptions of laughter. Commotion. Retelling of stories from the weekend parties. More noise. Grease-soaked chicken fingers piled high on plates. Plans for this weekend's parties. A yogurt and bagel cradled in a girl's hands. More noise. Two boys bumping into one another and slapping each other on the back. More noise. A boy and a girl sheepishly try to hold a conversation without blushing or stammering. More noise.

Everything seems normal. However, at a table at the far end of the cafeteria sits a group of students who, dressed the same and looking the same as the other students, are nevertheless different. This group of students, mostly boys, all have brown bag lunches. If you were to follow these students through the school day, you would discover many reasons other than their lunches for their not fitting into the common culture. (I use common culture in place of dominant culture and unique culture instead of minority culture to avoid the negative connotations of the latter terms.) For several decades independent schools have made a concerted effort to diversify their student bodies. However, schools have taken a number of shortsighted steps since the early 1990's that have placed speed bumps and potholes in the road to a truly diverse school community.

First of all, many school administrators planned diversity efforts in the belief that diversity was solely a matter of color. As a result, schools recruited African American students but failed to retain them, because in general they didn't "fit in." Some schools limited their diversity recruitment efforts to athletes of color. This effort helped certain students, but too often these students supported the stereotype that the school's black male students were all basketball players on scholarship. Schools created promotional literature displaying pictures of a diverse student body and mailed it to target groups. However, once those schools "got them in the door" African American families and other families of color would see the contrast between school literature and the student body.

Independent schools have also tended to view diversity as a student issue and not a community issue, or as simply a theme of the year. If we change the complexion of our student body and faculty, then we will become diverse. One year at the independent school where I teach we focused our professional development discussions on race, another year on gender, and a third year on sexual orientation. We embrace one characteristic of diversity at a time, but we fail to grasp all of its components at once.

Finally, when we became successful at recruiting diverse students and offered them tuition aid, we assumed that once they entered the school, they would become typical independent school students. Unfortunately, we failed to realize that these students, in addition to tuition aid, needed money for books, trips, and sporting gear, to say nothing of the intangible costs of fitting in, possessing the correct jewelry, shoes, book bag, or the ability to drive to school, purchase lunch, travel to Florida with the lacrosse team during spring break, attend the school prom and every other extra that comes along in the life of an independent school student. We did not appreciate the degree to which the students of color we have recruited will need emotional support to deal with the common culture. Their styles of learning may be different than what the school is used to providing; therefore, they and the teachers will need additional instructional support.

In order to address the challenges that a commitment to diversity brings to a community, schools must embrace a number of ideas to support the constituents who are affected by the transition from a homogeneous community to a heterogeneous community. Since all of the constituents are affected, all of the constituents must be included in the remedy.

First of all, tuition aid isn't enough to ensure successful completion of high school. Second, viewing diversity as a student issue is a narrow view. All of the constituents are affected; therefore, recruitment must apply to the faculty, staff, administration, and even the board of trustees. The common culture needs support and counsel in accepting various unique cultures into the community. Third, it is essential that the school views diversity as a multi-dimensional framework in which race, gender, ethnicity, socio-economic status, creed, and sexual orientation are examined.

Central questions need to be raised continuously. For example, who needs support? Do the faculty and administration provide enough of a presence in the hallways and cafeteria to recognize issues? Is there a forum for students to raise concerns either publicly or privately? Is the faculty empowered to understand the issues of diversity? Are the students empowered? Is the environment emotionally and physically safe? Does the curriculum reflect diversity? Is the curriculum contributing to stereotypes surrounding diversity? These questions need to be raised on a regular basis by all the constituents of the school community and can't be limited to in-service days and outside speakers. In essence, a school must see diversity as an economic issue, as a universal reality, as a multi-dimensional theme, and as a curricular concern.

Economic Issues
One day a young African American girl was sitting in the lobby of our school. A teacher saw her and inquired why she was not at sports. She informed the teacher that she was on the tennis team, but was told to leave because she didn't have her racket. The teacher asked if she had forgotten it. The student explained that she did not own one. Fortunately, the teacher had the sense and the heart to help this student obtain a tennis racket. However, there was a fundamental flaw in the school's ability to realize this student may have particular needs beyond the cost of tuition. An assumption was made that once a student's tuition was covered by financial aid, she would be able to assimilate into the common culture. There was no economic support system beyond the cost of tuition to ensure that this student had everything she needed to have to take full advantage of what this independent school offered.

Michael W. Apple views schools as organizations of relations with regard to domination and exploitation (p. 123, 1997). Consequently, this young girl would perceive that her chances of making the tennis team were limited in contrast to the white upper class girls, who could afford all the necessities to play tennis: racket, shoes, tennis lessons, club fees, and so on. As a result, a certain population of students has dominion within the structure of the school because economically they have no restraints.

How would this experience transfer to the rest of this girl's school experience? If we put ourselves in her place, then we would come to a better understanding of her position. Let's ask some basic questions: how would we feel asking strangers for money? How would we feel if all our colleagues possessed certain types of houses or cars which we could not afford? How would we feel if our colleagues were making social plans, and we couldn't go because of the expense?

The relations of power for this particular student may be so overwhelming that success at her independent school may be impossible. Independent Schools need to recognize the economic power struggle between affluent students and the financial aid students. Independent Schools need to recognize that

Relations of power are indeed complex and we need to take very seriously the postmodern focus on the local and on the multiplicity of the forms of struggle that need to be engaged. It is important as well to recognize the changes that are occurring in many societies and to see the complexity of the "power/ knowledge" nexus (Apple, 1997).

Independent Schools have generally taken a very limited view of "relations of power" and associated them with issues of color, ignoring the complexity of class, gender, and other realities of diversity. "The complexity of power/ knowledge" is real at an independent school in which the students who are recruited for purposes of diversity are outnumbered once they are imbedded in the common culture, but they are not just outnumbered because of difference in complexion. They are outnumbered because their concerns are not part of the official knowledge of the institution.

Universal Reality
One of the failures of independent schools at diversity is that the focus of diversification is on the unique culture. There is a tendency to look at the unique culture as over there or out there. Therefore, diversity is viewed as a foreign issue affecting other people. Schools can improve by broadening the discussion to include an examination of the common culture. In "Contradictions of Experience" McCarthy (1998) states, "Racial inequality is a complex, many sided phenomenon that embraces both structural and cultural characteristics." If this is true, then an independent school must examine its focus on diversity so the lens is not just focused on the unique culture.

Frequently, the common culture at an independent school has suffered from finger pointing by advocates of the unique culture. Reminders of past sins have been used to conjure up guilt within the common culture. However, this approach drives a wedge between the two groups. When one group of people tells another group of people how to feel, resistance is the result. Using an in-service approach in which guilt is used as a tool to persuade people to become more receptive to a unique culture results in resistance. The "in your face" approach to making the common culture more sensitive to the unique culture's situation usually creates dysfunction and makes people defensive and suspicious. Independent schools must realize that everyone possesses a perception of diversity, but usually this perception is centered on other people

McCarthy's (1998) concepts of contradiction and nonsynchrony are helpful in exploring the relations among groups in a school setting. He explains "individuals or groups, in their relation to economic, political, and cultural institutions do not share identical consciousness, nor express the same interests, needs, or desires" simultaneously (page 67). Therefore, everyone must have an opportunity to share his or her consciousness, interests, needs, and desires because all of these must be deemed important by the institution and the people who make up the institution. If an independent school views diversity as a universal condition, then it won't overextend itself to satisfy the unique culture. The institution will extend itself to invite the common culture to help resolve the difficulty that the unique culture may be experiencing. Also, the opportunity to share consciousness, interests, needs, and desires must become a common thread in the fabric of the curriculum, the rules and mission of the institution, the disciplinary system, the institutional celebrations, the pedagogical practices, and diagnostic and evaluative tools used to assess performance.

An independent school must be willing to evaluate whether it is providing a safe environment where every one is viewed as a vital member of the community. It must be able to ask McCarthy's tough questions. For example, do we have rules that "govern the production of inequality" (1998)? Do we ignore inequality in terms of class, gender, race, ethnicity, sexual orientation and religion? In summary, the independent school must view diversity as a universal reality; therefore, it must create a system of accountability, development, and communication in which diversity is the central issue with the goal of improving the overall quality of the school for all its constituents.

Multi-dimensional Concern
One day I was talking to a white student who was from the northeast section of Philadelphia. He was telling me why he didn't fit in. The other students referred to him as white trash and ghetto boy. This student's complexion may gain him an entry pass into the common culture, however, once conversation begins, the student will be judged and labeled and categorized. This scenario is the reason that the issue of diversity must cover the entire spectrum of variables from gender to class, from race to religion, from sexual orientation to ethnic background. This is where Apple's concepts of official and legitimate knowledge become key elements in the discussion of diversity and its universality in the school community:

As educators, we are involved in the struggle over meaning. Yet, in this society as in all others, only certain meanings are considered "legitimate," only certain ways of understanding the world get to be called "official knowledge" (Apple, 1993; Apple 1990). This just doesn't happen. Our society is structured in such a way that dominant meanings are more likely to circulate (Apple, 1997).