Milewski 1 Matthew Milewski Professor Rios ENC 1102H 28 April 2014 College Students and Boundaries to Interpersonal Friendships

During my time over the last year at UCF, I've noticed that the university pushes the idea of community quite often; it's even in the creed. This makes a lot of sense; relationships help people to connect with each other and broaden their perspectives. It's worth considering then whether issues like race, sexuality, and religion (all of which are likely the biggest dividing factors in our present society) can impede the creation of friendships during college. And are friendships that transcend these boundaries liable to provide beneficial effects not found in more homogenous, common ones? In addition to answering that question, I will analyze whether select spaces at UCF facilitate the creation of such interpersonal friendships. To start, interpersonal relationships (which is to say, friendships or other connections between people of differing races, sexualities, and/or religions) likely provide several beneficial effects to those that share it. This is likely due to the reason that friendships necessarily require empathy from both parties, leading to a deeper understanding about differences between the two. Susan Goldstein, a professor in the Department of Psychology at the University of Redlands, conducted a study on interpersonal friendships that suggested that they "have been associated with improved intergroup outcomes, including reduced anxiety...diminished expectations of rejection...more positive intergroup affect...and increased perceived outgroup variability..."

Milewski 2 (Goldstein 503).1 In my experience, this makes complete sense to me; making friends with others should naturally be an enjoyable experience, so it follows that positive benefits would follow. And that these benefits would correlate with differences between individuals would make sense as well. These positive benefits are great, but are these friendships more difficult to form than others? This seems to be the case, but the degree to which this is true oftentimes varies depending on the factor. For example, in a study conducted by Anna Muraco at the University of Michigan, heterosexual students were asked questions that concluded that "none of the respondents note an outright refusal to maintain a friendship with a gay male or lesbian friend. Rather, the bond of friendship appears to supersede heterosexist attitudes in being willing to offer support and assistance to a friend in need." (Muraco 604).2 But for a study on race relations, conducted by Judith N. Martin and Alison B. Trego of Arizona State University and Thomas K. Nakayama, it was suggested that the "more one develops friendships with people who are racially different from oneself, the less likely one is to see skin color as the defining element of race."3 (Martin, Trego, Nakayama 110-111). This of course means that skin color is a
1

Goldstein, Susan. "Predicting College Students' Intergroup Friendships Across Race/Ethnicity, Religion, Sexual

Orientation, and Social Class." Equity and Excellence in Education 46.4 (2013): 502-519. UCF Libraries. Web. 19 March 2014. p. 503
2

Muraco, Anna. "Heterosexual evaluations of hypothetical friendship behavior based on sex and sexual orientation."

Journal of Social & Personal Relationships 22.5 (2005): 587-605. UCF Libraries. Web. 22 March 2014. p.604
3

Martin, Judith, Trego, Allison, and Thomas Nakayama. "College Students' Racial Attitudes and Friendship

Diversity."Howard Journal of Communications 21.2 (2010): 97-118. UCF Libraries. Web. 23 March 2014. p.110111

Milewski 3 factor for those that aren't within diverse interpersonal relationships. And in the case of religion, a study using data from the National Study of Longitudinal Data found that over 90% of churches are racially homogenous, implying a prohibitive correlation between race and religion.4 What does this ultimately mean? I suspect that the reason race is a generally larger barrier for interpersonal relationships is because it is a physical characteristic, and therefore more immediately noticeable than a person's religion or sexuality. Race, religion, and sexuality have all been indicated to be deterrents to interpersonal friendships in the aforementioned studies, but race is the only one that is immediately noticeable. I personally can't recall a time when a discussion I've started with a stranger immediately shifted to the topic of religion or sexuality, for example. It makes these aspects less of an issue, because a budding relationship can already be established before these topics are broached, at which point the other party will be more accommodating than they might have been previously. As such, I intend to examine certain spaces on UCF closely to determine whether they have positive or negative effects when it comes to overcoming these differences. To begin, I'd like to take a closer look at UCF's Student Union. The Student Union's primary function is to serve as a gathering area for UCF's students, and provide areas for student organizations and studying. A lot of the actual structure of the Student Union is actually rather segmented; it is divided into four different floors (only three are accessible by students), and there are several rooms attached to these floors. Even when they aren't directly separated, there are oftentimes barriers between groups of students, like a glass walled section of the third floor. On a basic

Park, Julie. "When Race and Religion Collide: The Effect of Religion on Interracial Friendship During College."

Journal of Diversity in Higher Education 5.1 (2012): 8-21. UCF Libraries. Web. 23 March 2014. p.12

Milewski 4 structural level, UCF's Student Union would seem to exacerbate issues of division that already cause problems among students. This, however, would be ignoring the function of the Student Union as a meeting hub for various student organizations on campus. At this point, the several small rooms littered throughout the floors have an unexpected benefit: they put people within close proximity of each other within the groups. Since the groups meeting within these rooms are likely drawn there by a particular interest in the first place, it helps supersede barriers of race, religion, and sexuality by placing the group's focus at the forefront. If there is a location on UCF best designed for more impromptu meetings between people, it is Memory Mall. There's not much to say about Memory Mall as a location; it is simply a large stretch of lawn situated between the Student Union and the CFE Arena. This being said, it's also a good place to meet a variety of different people, particularly if you're the sporting type. Memory Mall's lack of compartmentalization encourages the people who use it as a space to grab people on the sidewalks and invite them in for a pickup game; this has happened to me personally several times. This introduces a sort of bond-making quality to the Memory Mall, and it's a certainly effective one. As far as examples of the potential spaces have to further encourage separation from other people, the Lake Claire Residency hall introduces this issue. Lake Claire is set up in such a way that places privacy over interaction with dorm mates. Each student in a Lake Claire dorm has their own room, and shares their bathroom with only one other person. I reside at Lake Claire, and for the last year I haven't talked much with my other dorm mates. I wouldn't put this fully on the space (it has just as much to do with my introverted personality), but it's a far cry from a place like Libra Hall, where your roommate is less than a dozen feet from you at all

Milewski 5 times. That kind of proximity tends to facilitate interpersonal relationships much more effectively. The main thing for UCF and other colleges to keep in mind when designing spaces is the importance of contained, non-compartmentalized spaces. Interpersonal friendships can provide a lot of great benefits to people, and spaces should be designed to help facilitate these. Even though this can't completely solve these issues of discrimination, space can be a powerful way to coax people into the right behaviors.