New York – A meeting of the A-Z Diversity Council for Progressive Education (DCPE) announced the 2020 World’s Most Diverse School of the Year, and it’s a surprise, small liberal arts school Wyoming Catholic College in Lander, WY. Home to only 180 students, WCC was on no one’s list for winning the prestigious award, but as DCPE committee chair for awards Sam Smith declared in today’s award ceremony, “The choice was obvious and the school we chose makes diversity not only incredibly central to its mission but practices what it preaches with the most diverse student body of any school we’ve ever seen.”
Students living in countries as far away and exoitic as Canada, states as diverse as Ireland, a small island off the coast of Maine, and savage desert island nations like Hawaii and the indigenous-dominant lands of Alaska and Illinois make up a large proportion of the student body. More prosaic and white populations from states like Michigan and Virginia are also represented amongst student hometowns but WCC has students from twenty-four different states and, believe itor not, three different countries in attendance!
Looking to historical lineage, the results show even greater diversity and inclusion. Among the 180 students, 56 ethnic backgrounds are represented, something matched by no other school of the size, while the school also hosts the world’s highest concentration of Milligan-American, Klein-Oregonian, and Witzeney-Saskatchewan nationalities of any school in the world.
Students from many religious backgrounds are treated with equal fairness and equity. Tridentine-preferenced students rubbing shoulders with a few Novus-Ordiners, Byzantines, California Catholics, and even one Protestant on her way to becoming Catholic. Although the school is officially Catholic, they welcome Catholics of “any enumeration along the Trad-Spectrum” according to school sacristan Bernard Clairvoux.
Women outnumber men at the school 90-89 and especially so amongst the freshmen class 28-23, with future projections showing that they will make up as much as 60% of applicants for the foreseeable future. Two out of the three Founder Scholarship full tuition competitive awards are reserved for them, one may go to a “person of diverse cultural background”, while amongst campus jobs, they are awarded leadership and managerial positions at a rate twice the level of men.
Diversity is also a big part of the curriculum, even as there is only one degree actually offered at the school, something which dean, Professor Cleanet said in a statement about their award “makes WCC have the highest proportion of students studying diversity matters of any school in the world”. The writings of St. Thomas Aquinas “ahead of his time on diversity according to Dr. Dziad, make up a large proportion of readings, but students learn “to come to diverse conclusions and we really aim for that in the way we integrate our class sections” student life office director Phil Radnor told IIT in an interview today.
The school itself has not been particularly outspoken but their diversity commitments up to now, preferring to let their actions and facts speak louder than words, but this award “will set up a new advertising campaign: Diversity in God’s Country, according to school executive vice president Saul H. Ciwoknot.
And when DCPE analysts used a new metric of diversity accounting, known as Class Diversity Qualitative Metering the school’s diversity is even more astounding. Looking at the simplest ehnic divisions, the school is 25% African American, 50% Asian, 25% American Indian, and 100% women. “We’re not sure how that all works,” Saul commented, “But we’re prepared to take things even further with a new program to expand our admissions further amongst populations still slightly underrepresented here: dwarves, hobbits, and orcs.”
NOLS, the National Outdoor Leadership School, located just across the street from WCC was also considered for the award but “their advertising was filled with outdoor supremacy” Sam Smith declared. “At WCC they have Cowboys that represent that population, but they celebrate their diversity by also having Philosophers and Poets.”