Lack of intercommunication and interaction between co-cultures

I.    Issue
A.    Lack of intercommunication and interaction between co-cultures on campus (i.e., international students tend to interact only with other international students, commuter students generally don’t interact often with other students outside of classes, etc.)
B.    Stereotyping
1.    “It is not the act of classifying that creates intercultural problems. Rather, it is the assumption that culture-specific information applies to every member of a particular cultural group.” – CBC p. 233
2.    People may avoid interacting with another group because they hold inherent stereotypes that members of this other group may only speak their native language, or only participate in their native culture.
C.    Uncertainty avoidance
1.    “The extent to which the members of a culture feel threatened by ambiguous or unknown situations.” – CBC p. 187
2.    People avoid interacting with these different groups because they are feeling threatened by these ambiguous situations
3.    How do we reconcile this with America’s relatively low avoidance?
D.    Ethnocentrism
1.    Some people may not interact with other groups because they view them as inferior somehow
2.    How do we reconcile this with people who genuinely just don’t feel the need for interacting with different groups?
E.    Individualism/Collectivism
1.    Individualistic cultures may tend to stay within their close social circles
F.    Developing Identities
1.    Majority development – domestic students?
2.    Minority deveopment – international students?
3.    People will look to others from same cultural group to know how to develop their own identity
G.    Can we identify what is causing this?
1.    Gathering our personal experiences
a)    Are you an international or domestic student?
(1)    Commuter v. On-campus
(2)    Extra-curricular v. not
(3)    Fraternity v. non-fraternal
b)    Do you hang out with opposite group of students?
c)    Why? Why not?
2.    Answers – Difficult to make friends from other groups because…
a)    We don’t speak the same language
b)    We don’t have the same culture
c)    We don’t share similar backgrounds
d)    We don’t have any immediate way to relate
e)    Don’t have a medium to meet people with outside of class
H.    Not everyone feels need to make friends from other groups, but those who do don’t know how to go about it
II.    Solution
A.    We think that encouraging intermingling of co-cultures can solve the issue
B.    Encouraging students from all groups (international, commuter, etc.) to participate in clubs and organizations
C.    Mandatory to join, optional to use – social network integrated with CIS/Canvas to encourage students to interact with other people from other social
circles/co-cultures
D.    A dating website but without the dating