Yue (Ivy) Wu Blog #8: Personality-based matching for cultural exchange student housing

My first article in this series discussed Anderson's notion of inherent communities as well as imagined ones. He argues that human beings draw allegiances based on immutable aspects of identity such as genetics or geographic origin, but also that imagined communities form on the basis of custom and culture, which bind the social fabric.

My community, the William and Mary population, is honestly one of homogenous culture. We are in the heart of Virginia's historical roots, a place steeped in memories of this nation's anglo-saxon origins. Though I am not certain of the actual numbers, I estimate that 80% of the students are from Northern Virginia and that most of them are caucasians. In recent years however, I've noticed a significant increase in the Asian subset of the William and Mary demographic- international students primarily. As an international student myself, I am keenly aware of the cultural barriers between those who have lived in this country and those who have just "stepped off the boat."

Based on what we've gathered from Imagined Communities, our campus is on the verge of schism. The racial differences among the Virginians, gender differences, whether you are from Norfolk or Lake Braddock, these differences are rather dwarfed when we talk about internationals. Inevitably, internationals will stick together.

If I were in charge of how William and Mary operates and if I were inclined to make changes to how our community operates, I would target student housing. In the three years that I've spent here so far, I've learned equally as much from the people I lived with as the professor's I've studied from. Therefore, I would suggest that William and Mary implement a cultural exchange program, which would match roommates mutually interested in learning each other's cultures. Example, a Northern Virginian African-American person who can play jazz piano interested in learning Japanese matched with a Japanese international student interested in learning better English and who also has an interest in Jazz.

In a sense, I am proposing a type of dating website style personality/interest matching system by which individuals can form relationships based on things other than their innately constructed social ties. This would allow individuals to find avenues of personal growth as well as a means of forming meaningful relationships with members of communities that they would never have imagined to explore.