One Tuesday morning this semester, I woke up at 8 a.m. to attend shacharit — Jewish morning prayers — at the Joseph Slifka Center for Jewish Life at Yale. An hour later I was pouring over the Gospel of Matthew, a foundational Christian text, in my Directed Studies literature class.

Political talking heads like to paint institutions like Yale as places where students only interact with people like themselves — places where intellectual experiences like I had that Tuesday morning would be unthinkable. From “segregated” graduations to race-based housing, much has been made in the media about the excesses of affinity spaces on college campuses. As much as I am inclined to agree with those criticisms, I am confronted with one unassailable fact: that I, too, am an affinity addict.

As Yale students, there is no shortage of places for us to get our affinity fix. Yale officially hosts five cultural spaces: the Afro-American Cultural Center, the Asian American Cultural Center, La Casa Cultural, the Native American Cultural Center and the newly opened MENA cultural suite. Plus, there’s the Yale LGBTQ Center. And, even then, students turn to religious affinity spaces like Chabad, Saint Thomas More and the Slifka Center.

How often do I go to Slifka? The better question is: when am I not there? I drop in between classes when I get a WhatsApp alert about free cookies. I am strong-armed — or rather I allow myself to be strong-armed — into stopping by when other students need to make a minyan, a quorum for Jewish prayer. And, for better or for worse, most of my close friends at Yale are fellow Jews.

Hit after hit, I can’t seem to get over my affinity addiction.

To be sure, my outlook on affinity isn’t totally dreary — far from it. Slifka and Chabad eased the transition into college by providing a constant sense of familiarity. They have helped me grow into my burgeoning Jewish identity as a young adult. Not to mention that a scenario in which I come out of Yale in four years with a strong network of like-minded Jewish peers would be a resounding success.

Still, in limiting my college experiences to people with similar backgrounds to my own, I can’t help but feel that I am siloing myself in my own community.

This realization is informed by Yale’s own history. In 1967, as Yale Admissions began to relax racial quotas and look beyond elite Northeastern prep schools for students, former University President Kingman Brewster penned a letter to then-Director of Admissions John Muyskens. Brewster’s mandate? Diversify the freshman class.

“An excessively homogeneous class will not learn anywhere near as much from each other as a class whose backgrounds and interests and values have something new to contribute to the common experience,” Brewster wrote.

The so-called Muyskens Letter continues to serve as one of Yale’s north stars. Indeed, even after fallout from the Supreme Court’s affirmative action decision, Yale has continued to tout its efforts to “support a pipeline of high-achieving applicants from diverse backgrounds.” The residential colleges, too, are intended to be microcosms of the diverse Yale community.

Yale goes to great lengths to build heterogeneous groups on campus. Yet many of us undo that work when we get here. This reality of our time at Yale is tragic because, as I’ve learned, life’s great privilege is being given the chance to understand other people’s sincerely held beliefs and convictions.

In high school, I stumbled upon the opportunity to study Northern Paiute, one of the indigenous languages in Nevada, at my local university. Could be interesting, I thought. Plus, somewhat ironically, my high school was willing to count it towards my “foreign” language requirement.

As the only non-indigenous student in the class, I am sure that my teachers and classmates often wondered what a Jewish kid was doing studying a language with only a few dozen native speakers. Frankly, I often wondered the same. Yet, from learning cultural parables to the many uses of different native plants, my time in Paiute class was one of the most edifying intellectual experiences of my life — one which took place far from the confines of my own community.

Yale has a strong Jewish community, and I don’t plan to tone down my involvement in it. Making efforts to meet new people doesn’t have to mean venturing far from my own. But my experiences studying Paiute and the New Testament have taught me that, in becoming so entrenched in our own communities, we lose out on a chance to learn about others.

Should I spend more time outside the Jewish community? Should I bust out of my silo?  Should I make an effort to diversify my friend group? These are all questions I will ponder Friday night. At Shabbat dinner. At Slifka.

MAX GRINSTEIN is a first year in Grace Hopper. He can be reached at max.grinstein@yale.edu.