Universities have a dual role in educating students. On one hand, students are encouraged to ask tough questions and to search out answers in the pursuit of furthering their own intellect. On the other, universities will try to lead their students in a certain direction by asking them some challenging questions.

The norm is that no question should go unasked or unanswered, but that itself was questioned this year when Elmhurst College asked:

“Would you consider yourself to be a member of the LGBT (lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgendered) community?”

At first, this question would seem like it is doing some good for the LGBT community by showing that the university does in fact recognize that homosexuality is something of value. The college’s admission board has the best of intentions by identifying those students that may be afraid to be who they truly are in a society that is not fully accepting of their behavior. They asked the question so that they could direct those students to the available resources on campus “that takes care of them,” said Gary Rold, dean of admissions at Elmhurst College, in an “NPR”:http://www.npr.org/2011/09/03/140163731/sexual-orientation-added-to-illinois-colleges-application interview.

In keeping with the view point of almost every institution of higher education, Elmhurst hoped that they also could use the information to further diversify their student population.

The problem is that they are doing so at the expense of their applicants.

Elmhurst is essentially asking their applicants to identify themselves as one sexual orientation at a time when most people are still confused about their sexual preferences. On average, people have decided on their orientation “between the ages of 15 and 17”:http://www.glsen.org/cgi-bin/iowa/all/news/record/1970.html, but they may have not come out about their sexuality yet.

That then defeats the purpose of the question. If a person hasn’t come out yet, explicitly asking them won’t encourage them to do so, nor will it make them any more comfortable with admitting it. If someone is against identifying their true sexuality, they will naturally deny any allegation against it. Ask anyone who has struggled with identifying themselves with a preference that is not heterosexuality, and they will have more than likely spent most of their adolescent years denying they were gay. A check box on an application is not going to change that.

Elmhurst does try to make the question fair to all students by making it optional — but it isn’t entirely.

By checking that you identify yourself as part of the LGBT community, you are then eligible for the Enrichment Scholarship, which can cover up to one-third of the college’s tuition. Now you can’t exactly skip the question since the possibility of a scholarship is on the line. It’s now a question of exploiting a part of your identity for money. Since when did someone’s love life warrant the need for money?

By simply asking the question, a huge window of opportunity for untruthful answering has opened. Students who identify themselves as heterosexual could easily say that they are LGBT in hopes of earning some extra money for school. LGBT students may not answer honestly, or even at all, for fear of any consequence, imagined or real. Unlike race or gender, both of which are usually readily discernible, something like homosexuality is more nuanced and difficult for an admissions board to validate.

Elmhurst president S. Alan Ray “believes”:http://public.elmhurst.edu/news/archive/128701253.html that this is a possibility, but it would only “marginally increase the potential for pranks and fraud.” Even if only marginal, the question is still unacceptable.

Common App, the organization that services over 400 universities, “declined”:http://thechoice.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/26/common-ap-2/ to add the question on their applications because they feared it would cause an anxiety that would overshadow any benefit of asking the question.

It is highly understandable that a university should want a diverse population since the mainstream idea is that people learn by meeting other people with different experiences. But diversity does not just mean race, gender, age, socioeconomic class or sexual orientation. The diversity that counts is one such that a student knows firsthand what living in a war zone is like, or someone knows just what it is to live in the mountains of Peru, or — less profound — that another has a desire to only eat with chopsticks.

Our gender, race or sexual orientation is but only a facet of our larger character. By reducing people to these characteristics, we compartmentalize people into smaller and smaller groups that live side by side, but not together. The fact that a university defines its diversity in terms of the statistics that represent these broad characteristics is misguided.

If diversity is what is desired, consider the applicants’ experiences by asking more questions about that. It’s much more interesting to read about a university’s diverse population in terms of the amount of Slam Poets, Mount Everest climbers or actors with Broadway experience in attendance.

If you can only get to know a student body holistically, then leave the personal questions off the application.

_Ryan is a sophomore in LAS._