Marketing Photos Diversity at St. Francis

Marketing Photos:

DIVERSITY AT ?

By: Noëllie Inard Entertainment Editor

You may have seen them on campus, in the street around the university or on the University of St. Francis’ website. The marketing pictures for the University are usually used for banners to promote the University and show some bits of students’ lives while also showing the campus.

As a representation of the University, the University naturally takes advantage of all the students already on campus by photographing them. Since diversity is an essential aspect that USF wants to promote, promotional pictures usually include diverse students. However, as much as those banners portray USF as a university that fosters a vast diversity of students, it can sometimes feel as if those banners are a postcard for a diversity commercial.

USF evolved as an open-minded Catholic university long ago and now lets students explore their diversity. We have clubs like Gender Sexual Alliance (GSA), Black Student Association (BSA), the Asian American Student Association and the International Club, among others, on campus. However, looking at those banners and setting foot on the USF campus can feel relatively different than what is being promoted.

Many promotional pictures feel as if students of color are being used for marketing purposes. While showing and promoting diversity is something we need, students’ ethnicities should not become a means to market a specific image for the university.

Showing a picture of a Muslim student, a white student, a black student and an Asian American student is not an efficient way to display diversity on campus as it shows no sense of actual diversity. Instead, diversity should be shown by genuine interactions between the students with authentic pictures of events on campus portraying students coming together no matter their race or gender.

Diversity and inclusion mean more than having statistics showing how many ethnicities are on campus. According towww.merriam-webster.com, diversity is “the practice or quality of including or involving people from a range of different social and ethnic backgrounds and of different genders, sexual orientations, etc.”

A student from USF who wishes to stay anonymous stated, “I think the marketing photos should be more natural rather than picking out students that they feel represent the school. When they do that, it comes off as forced.”

Although there is no doubt that USF is an inclusive school with students from different ethnicities, backgrounds, genders and countries, the University might find a better way portray the inclusion that students of color bring to USF.