Tow #6: Visual Text: College Recruiting Pamplets

For the past couple of months, colleges have been sending my sister and me tons of recruiting pamphlets in the mail or via email. Although the pamphlets vary in size, color, and other aspects, they all serve a common purpose. That purpose is to convince high school seniors to apply to their school, and convince other high school students to plan on applying to their college. In this particular pamphlet cover above, Elon University is directly targeting people interested in arts and sciences because at the top of the page a male student is playing the trumpet, but below a female student is performing a science experiment. Although the college is based in North Carolina, they want anyone of any race or gender to apply if they are interested in arts and sciences. Colleges, including Elon University, are generally effective in attracting people that would be interested in their programs. I myself have considered applying to a few of the colleges I discovered in the mail because they explain their program and what their school has to offer thoroughly. However, one thing I find consistent and ineffective with all college recruiting pamphlets is the attempt to show racial diversity throughout. In the example above, a black student and a white student is shown. It is as if Elon believes they have appealed to all races by including only two of them. Earlier this week I received a pamphlet from the University of Connecticut. Inside there was a picture of six college students holding hands and jumping off of a ledge smiling ridiculously. These students were a mixture of four different races and both genders. This same picture can be found in almost every pamphlet, so it is ineffective because it is unoriginal. Colleges are blatantly including every race they can possibly find at their school and stuffing them into one picture, which is unrealistic. My sister and I find it so comical that we made it a game to see which college has the most races represented, which is not the college's intended use of their pamphlets. When will colleges stop trying so hard to show diversity? It is very distracting and the overall message can be ignored because these pictures are so ridiculous, therefore the purpose may not be fully achieved.