The importance of semantics between equity and equality only lays within their implementation, where equality is giving everyone the same thing and equity is giving everyone what is demanded by their needs. At DePaul, especially as a part of Chicago and furthermore as a setting of higher education, liberalism is the norm. However, the striking privilege that wealth grants nearly everyone at this institution prevents most in our community from seeing the bigger picture, blinding them with the à la mode progressivism of Lincoln Park. Sure, equity is implemented in classrooms, like by providing extra aid to disabled students (to the extent I immediately understand from my limited perspective as an abled person). But, the equity is undermined by the culture of liberal centrism—aesthetic spinelessness—adopted by so many students.
DePaul does an adequate job in delivering equity between students, such as by having ample organizations designed for minorities and only one that caters directly to the cis white male (College Republicans). Where DePaul lacks is in how its community is occupied by the insidious suppression of quietist centrism, undermining equity's necessary radicalism for the sake of oppressor comfort. Yet, what college has taught me so far, more than anything I've learned in class, is that an unfortunate amount of people are content being less than they could be— apathetic to reform. The ease of their silence speaks volumes. Who knows, maybe I'm just cynical from all this equality.
