“Consent is more than just words on a sign.” To get into most parties at Stanford, students must read a large cardboard sign affirming their commitment to respectfully interact with others in the space. Most people reading the sign are drunk and incomprehensible, and it’s admittedly a bit of a running joke amongst many students — however, my friends at Georgetown and Northwestern were shocked when I mentioned this Stanford phenomenon over break. Just one and a half quarters into college, most of my friends know the sign well enough to recite it by heart, and given that most American college students’ understanding of consent is widely varied and capacious, this is no small feat. This small push towards equity and consent may not seem like much more than a mild inconvenience, but it encourages us to reflect and consider how we conduct ourselves and interact with others.

Coming from a small, Quaker New York City high school, I grew up in what is essentially the Fox News idea of a woke nightmare. Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) was placed into everyday routine, from sharing pronouns at our first classes of each semester to learning about Indigenous history during morning announcements. My predominantly white school’s form of DEI was largely centered around inclusion, promoting cultural pride and education. As head of the Asian Culture Club, I learned to work with administrators to plan events, advocate for funding to encourage community between Asian students and hold sometimes awkward, controversial conversations about political events. 

Let me be clear — I left my high school unhappy with its state of DEI. My work in the Asian Culture Club left me burnt out, feeling undue responsibility and pressure to advocate for change that was ultimately unlikely to make progress institutionally. I was rallying students, planning events and balancing my own life as a student and teenager. 

My first-ever opinion essay was about DEI, arguing that too often, its burden falls on people of color or gender- and sexuality-marginalized groups to educate their more privileged peers. This reinforces a false notion of obligation for marginalized people to get involved in DEI. It sends the message that their equity is contingent on them taking initiative rather than others working to meet them at least halfway. 

That being said, I only felt comfortable stating my critical opinion because of the language I learned from that very imperfect work. I had confidence that DEI at my school would ideally make a change, or would at worst stay the same somewhat-flawed, but important program. You can’t criticize DEI, or anything, when it doesn’t exist. A program with flaws is better than no program at all. 

I remember organizing a discussion about affirmative action after the Supreme Court’s ruling in 2023, first sharing general information about race-conscious admissions and who they historically benefited, and then opening the space for students to share their honest opinions. Some peers abandoned their previously held misconceptions about affirmative action, others did not change their beliefs, but everyone left the meeting with a shared understanding of what affirmative action meant, how it affected us as students and how they could talk about it productively. 

To me, DEI programming is a starting point. Opening the door for diverse opinions and people of different lived experiences enables discourse and demonstrates that respectful disagreement and collaboration are what create tangible solutions to inequity. Without inclusion as an institutional norm, companies and organizations have no incentive or pressure to alter the status quo’s inherent exclusive hierarchy. Small culture shifts in school and the workplace regarding how we speak to or about others, what we learn and who we learn from allow people to develop a critical understanding of inequity and come to their own conclusions about how diversity can improve their life. 

DEI is in no small part concerned with language. The power of language goes back to Genesis 11 in the Torah, when the people of Babel used their common language to build a tower to the heavens. With shared speech, “nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them.” As a result, they are scattered by their Lord and forced to speak different tongues, unable to collaborate and therefore unable to unite as a collective. Without shared language and a way to communicate, they are powerless. If language has the ability to uproot and challenge institutions, it becomes a danger to anyone withholding power.   

A cardboard sign outside a frat party cannot guarantee positive action, but it forces the reader to think twice. Linguist Robin Lakoff argues that “to write or speak is to communicate. To communicate is to share meanings, make them ‘common’ to all participants in the discourse.” I think this argument can be taken a step further. The way we speak and write does not just affect how we share knowledge, but how we come to understand that knowledge in the first place. Without words like discrimination, bias and exclusion, how can you understand your oppression in relation to others? Without shared definitions, people cannot effectively communicate. 

Given the importance of shared definitions and language, it should be no surprise that when fascist regimes come into power, they go for literature first — not just banning books by the socially othered or reforming education as propaganda for the new government, but limiting the very language that allows us to identify what we’re feeling, why we’re feeling it and how we’re not alone. DEI is about more than just “diversity hires;” it redefines our understanding of the world and the people we share it with.