Student involvment missing
Cultural Diversity Meeting yields more questions

-- Jo Gordon

More questions than answers came out of the Feb. 1 Student Senate-sponsored Cultural Diversity Meeting.

The meeting to discuss the Minnesota State Colleges and Universities’ Strategic Diversity Plan took place in Founders Hall and was chaired by LeRoyce Walker-Fields, peer ambassador and cultural diversity representative of the student senate.

Advisor and teacher Donna Blacker asked, "How do you fight institutional racism when locked into a structured governance?" Student and diversity trainer Akmed Khalifa asked, "What is the university’s knowledge/understanding of diversity?" Writing tutor Katie Kraemer wondered, "What are faculty required to do?" Add in the on-going chorus from the 17 attendees, "How do we get more students involved?"

Such thought-provoking questions underscored the complexity of the issue and the challenges that Metropolitan State University student organizations face.

Walker explained that the purpose of the strategic diversity plan is to design strategies to recruit, retain and graduate more students from underserved, disenfranchised populations and to provide measures to hold colleges and universities accountable.

She spoke of our obligation as adult learners to reach out to the students following us and our communities. On the whiteboard behind her was her own list of questions; at the top of that list, "Why does only one percent of the student body control all student activity?"

In the discussion proceeding Walker’s presentation, Blacker echoed a similar query. She commented that "with the exception of the senate, students do not play a role in the decisions."

Khalifa noted that students are unaware of the power they have. He went on to ask whether a unity of purpose among the different student organizations existed.

A series of student focus groups on Community Anti-Racism Consciousness is scheduled to follow up this meeting.