Last week, I saw how the term ‘diversity’ has the potential to derail honest debate about academic quality.

I was an independent observer when it happened and, as such, saw these opinion pages become host to a lively and refreshing debate about changing admissions policies at Syracuse University. However, each Letter to the Editor asked a question that shouldn’t need answering: Does diversity come with the price of declining academic rigor? This should be a total nonstarter, and the allegation that someone might answer in the affirmative is offensive and distracts from a truly constructive discourse. The important questions lie in how we define SU and what the value of an education here is.

Some students come to Syracuse for the supposed prestige of a degree from an expensive private university. These students must come to grips with the fact that Syracuse is not Cornell, it is not Harvard, and admissions policies don’t have much to do with it. Ivy League colleges are prestigious because of high academic standards, intellectually engaging campus cultures and long histories of elitism. Exclusivity is a symptom, not a cause, of prestige.

We clearly need other ways to think about educational value at Syracuse, but such an overarching conception of value for a university with a large liberal arts college, an art school and a variety of professional schools might not even be appropriate. Each student will want something completely different out of their time here, and the vast diversity of colleges in this university ensures the issue of educational value is one where reasonable disagreement will persist and any consensus will be thin.

If the value of a Syracuse diploma is to be debated at all, we must set clear terms for what SU is and ought to be. If our institutional mandate is Scholarship in Action, great — but let’s be honest about the consequences of that vision. Draping it in rhetoric and enormous banners doesn’t help. The core vision is laudable: We ought to conceive of the university as a public good, and opening the university to all is clearly a noble task. If Syracuse wants to be an inclusive university with the main goal of serving students with a wide variety of goals, then it cannot also want to be Harvard. We must decide, as an institution, to commit to a vision and strive, as an institution, to honestly grasp the consequences therein.

The last point of Scholarship in Action is to ‘cultivate and sustain public intellectuals.’ This happens when the university functions as a true marketplace of ideas, fostering a vibrant intellectual life where young people can discover the passions that will drive them to greatness. Ivy League colleges do this very well. Admissions policy has some role in this function, but as last week’s debate has shown, ‘the admission enterprise is complex.’ Administrators, as admissions specialists and decision-makers, have an obligation to explain these complexities as they arise, as Chancellor Nancy Cantor and the deans did so eloquently in these pages last week.

Students’ position on the diversity scale has much less to do with their contribution to intellectual life than their intellect. All students clearly have the potential for the intellectual curiosity that drives a university’s success. Diversity, whatever its inherent value, distracts from the real issue — all the participants in our intellectual enterprise must do everything possible to ensure our marketplace of ideas thrives. Transparent debates about policy only help this project along.

Scott Collison is a senior philosophy and physics major. His columns appear occasionally, and he can be reached at smcollis@syr.edu.