Malcolm Gladwell Community And Diversity

The College Experience With the vision of colorful and meaningful college life, a large number of high school students long for the college experience and are determined to attend college. Some of them focus more on acquiring knowledge, whereas others are inclined to make new friends and devote themselves to social activities. Colleges are communities where learning knowledge is the fundamental goal; at the same time, students support the college community by attending various lectures and participating in various activities. In “Community and Diversity”, Rebekah Nathan explores the difference between a university’s stated goals for both community and diversity and their realization on campus. Malcolm Gladwell in “Small Change” discusses the

Gladwell points out that “Social networks are effective at increasing participation—by lessening the level of motivation that participation requires”(234). That means social networks increase the number of participants, but they succeed by motivating students to do things that they do when are not motivated enough. Gladwell asserts that weak ties are not tight enough to motivate students to participate in activities which need a sacrifice. Nevertheless, he forgets to consider the condition where students have a strong willingness to participate. Under this circumstance, friends on social media are their source of information. Exposed to information on various activities, students have a wider range of activities to choose to participate in. Another way to promote participation is raising students’ motivation by transforming weak ties into strong ties through diverse collective activities. Nathan states that a multiplicity of activities fragment the whole community even further. “With varying degrees of success, this was the pattern of ‘community involvement’ that operated at various levels of the university: a multiplicity of voluntary activities, a handful of participants at each, and renewed efforts to create new activities that were more relevant and attractive, resulting in an even greater proliferation of choices and fragmentation of the whole” (Nathan 317). That means abundant activities separate students into small groups and fragment the college community. A variety of attractive activities are vying for students’ participation, but students can only choose one activity that they are most interested during one period of time. Due to a multiplicity of activities, the number of participants in each activity is diminished, thus the community is spread thin(Nathan 316). Nathan looks into the negative influence