The beginning of our journey in understanding the issues students on Carnegie Mellon University’s campus face in terms of differences was within our class. The class began our cultural crosswalking experience with discussing our own experiences and the experiences of our friends. Our ultimate goal was to share what we called "critical incidents" with each other. A critical incident is a specific situation where someone is actually involved in a position where there is problem at hand. Critical incidents are imperative in our research because they help to avoid generalizations about interactions on campus. When we make it our purpose to get critical incidents out of each other and or peers, we begin to collect particular accounts of students which lead to different insights and interpretations.

 While it was helpful to begin with gathering critical incidents amongst the class, it became time to broaden our network of students throughout the campus. Our goal in collecting critical incidents was to be able to reach a diverse group of students and faculty. Each member of the class was expected to approach people they did not know on campus and hold an interview with the person and try to extract information about differences as specifically as possible.

After we compiled our critical incidents together and discussed them, we discovered that there were reoccurring issues that many of our interviewees reported in the stories. Our class came up with four different categories most of the incidents fell into: Intercollegiate Relations; Cultural Barriers; Voluntary Segregation; and Socio-Economic and Sexual Orientation Conflicts. In the following section of the website, you will find our critical incidents categorized and an archive which contains the entire compilation of critical incidents which includes the incidents that we were not able to fit into a category. All the incidents are important and we hope they will give you a good idea as to what we found in our investigation.
  
  
"Being a Member of the Team"
An Asian student recalled one day when he was feeling like a game of basketball and decided to go to the courts. He was not with his usual group of friends who he realized were all Asians. Alone at the courts, he waited for the on-going games to end so he could join in the next game. The games ended, but the student still did not get chosen to play a game. The student noticed that the games continued to end and he was still not chosen. This continued for three games until he found a group of Asian players who invited him to join their game. The incident this student faced was one more reason he felt more comfortable having his group of friends come from the same racial backgrounds.
  
  
  
  
"The Understanding of Cultures"
A white male who works as an advisor described an incident in which the understanding of cultures was an issue. The advisor had a Korean student who was doing poorly in his major, but was not allowed to switch majors because he was afraid he would disgrace his family. When the student’s grades proved to get worse, the advisor met with the student’s father. The student’s father was set on the idea that the student was to improve his grades or he was to be forced to go to the Korean military, but changing his major was out of the question. The student eventually failed out of school and returned to Korea to enter the military. The advisor did not understand the cultural background of the Korean student and perhaps he was not able to help as much as he could in the situation.
  
  
  
 
"Drama Party"
Invited to a party by a sports team buddy, this male majoring in Information Systems chose to attend. When he arrived at the party, however, he was surprised how he felt like such an "outsider." Apparently the party was hosted by a drama student and most of her guests were with also drama majors. The discussions and small talk focused around "shows" he held no knowledge of. Furthermore, the general population of the party displayed a rather flamboyant attitude and dancing style to which he was very unaccustomed. He felt embarrassed about his "feeble" dancing skills. While all of the people seemed nice and extremely friendly, this extroverted behavior also made him feel rather uncomfortable. Not used to such outgoing guests at parties, this student attributes the extreme social confidence and comfort of these people to the weakening of his own.
  
 
  
  
"Treated Differently"
A freshman female majoring in Statistics and having a strong German family background talks about being openly bisexual at Carnrgie Mellon. She was hesitant at first and responded that there was not much a problem here for her. In her past, there had been some bad situations, but at college, people seem to be more open-minded about these things. However, she did say that when she first told people here that she was bisexual, their attitudes around her changed briefly. It wasn’t like a huge change and loss in friends, but it did seem to make a few of them a little uncomfortable.
For example, she is an acquaintance with a guy that lives on the floor below her, but one of her good friends knows him very well and they hang out quite often. He is of full Indian decent and has a totally different view on homosexuality than most people in America do. One day, the guy and a few other people were around and my interviewee decided to share with everyone that she was bisexual. She thought that everyone should know. As soon as this acquaintance of hers heard what she said, he became almost disgusted. Immediately he was asking her multiple questions of why and how she became the way that she did. She knew that he was totally shocked and a little confused as to how to react to this, but she figured it was just his culture that made him think that way. After all of this happened and time had passed, he still felt like he had to act differently around her. "I think he thought he needed to be ‘extra nice’ to me because I’m bisexual and he is not comfortable with that. It’s like he had to prove something. Before it was always a short ‘What’s up?’ and now he goes into a huge conversation and wishes I have a good day."
This experience with a few others has not changed her opinion on CMU as a whole on the issue of homosexuality. She thinks that the campus is better than most when accepting people that open themselves up to everyone else. She hasn’t seen much of a problem here perhaps because there are supposedly so many gays and lesbians on campus.